Star Castle for the Vectrex (another favorite system of mine)In that vector game, you needed to blast through a rotating shield while avoiding homing missiles and a powerful blast from the enemy at various points. The similarities between the games were a good thing.
Basically in Yars' Revenge you are a Yar (1) - which is an alien insect species, and you must seek revenge on the Qotile (3) for destroying your world. Great, but the gameplay made the game a blast to play. You needed to battle through a shield (5) protecting the Qotile, and launch the Zorlon Cannon (2) through the gap in the shield and kill the Qotile to win each level.
Your weapons are an energy bullet to get through the shield, and also your teeth! The Yar can eat away at the shield, and doing these things earns you Tron, which are what the energy units are called. When you get enough Tron, the Zorlon cannon appears and you can shoot it at the Qotile.
The Qotile have weapons too. At times it will transform into a Swirl, and shoot out from behind the shield at various speeds. You will need to make a speedy move to avoid it! A homing missile (4) will also follow the Yar around the screen and mean instant death if it touches you. There is also a strip of color down the center of the screen which is called the Neutral Zone (6), which you can use to get a little rest. The missile can't hurt you there, but you can't shoot either. The Swirl can definitely still kill you, so watch out!
Moving the Yar around the screen you had to dodge the missile, watch for the swirl, shoot, eat the shield, etc. There was a lot going on! You even had to make sure you didn't shoot yourself with the Zorlon Cannon, which is very fast, and will not distinguish between friend and foe. As your score built the game got harder. It was a great time though, and we got pretty good. Good enough to be able to zap the swirl right out of the air and gain many, many extra lives.
You sit in one spot and wait for the swirl to fire. If you time it right, you could blast it in mid-air and get a free life and a bunch of points.
If you do blast it in mid-air you could also go for the easter egg and see the programmers initials. This type of thing was a big no-no back in the day. Atari liked to keep the talent anonymous.
This is the explosion effect after killing the Qotile.
Watch out for the Swirl!Overall, I'd have to rate this game a 9! It was great fun, and value for the money was excellent. We played the heck out of this one, and wore out (broke) a few joysticks along the way when the action got really tough. There were several different gameplay options, which were the norm for most Atari cartridges. You could play with bouncing Zorlon cannon, faster Missile, etc.
Game 6, Ultimate Yars was our favorite. It's pretty sick! Definitely required you to keep an eye on many different things, move fast, and plan your attack. I remember that we made up our own rules as well, such as not being able to shoot the Qotile until the entire shield was eaten or destroyed. Only eating the shield, and not blasting with bullets or cannon, etc. It added a little element of extra difficulty to our play sessions.This is definitely a game that everyone probably has in their retro Atari collection, but it deserves to be on your retro play list as well. Even today, this is a good little game which challenges you and remains a lot of fun.
My Final top score I got playing for this review. Not my best ever!
