GDC 2011: Hands-on: Yar's Revenge - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 05 March 2011 / 3,401 Views
PSN must be one some kind of Atari kick between Burgertime HD and Yar’s Revenge. But while Burgertime HD was very easily recognizable as a remake Yar’s Revenge looks like an entirely different game. The classic 2D shooter has been turned into a 3D “moving into the screen” shooter. The left stick controls your characters movement around the screen while the right stick moves your shooting reticule independently. All of the weapons are mapped to the shoulder buttons with R2 firing your standard machine gun and R1 uses a rail gun which has a long cooldown timer. Power-ups include picking up missiles that can fire at multiple locked on targets and shield power increases. High scores are all about killing enemies quickly to increase your multiplier. If you spend too long in a lull you’ll quickly lose the multiplier so you have to pace your killing accordingly.
The biggest and most obvious difference between the original and the remake is definitely the visual presentation. What was an indescript little ship-like thing is now a girl-turned-machine with wings and rockets coming out of her feet who refers to herself as “this-one” in classic robot style. There were six different stages in the campaign that I could see for the demo and a challenge mode. When I started the campaign, a short cutscene using what seemed to be hand drawn still images and text to tell a simple back story. One personal positive note for me was that the first stage is set in a jungle fighting against large bugs and it reminded me of the toxic jungle in "Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind." Later stages have different settings, so unfortunately I won’t be buying the game on misplaced nostalgia alone. Watch for Yar’s Revenge on PSN later this year.
