Yars' Revenge

Yars' Revenge is part of the subgenre of shooter games called either the fixed or single-screen shooter. Yars' Revenge differs from many other similar popular games from that era such as Space Invaders (1978), Galaxian (1979), or Gorf (1981) as its gameplay has the main axis of conflict oriented horizontally rather than vertically. The player controls Yar, a fly-like object which can be moved in any direction on the screen. The screen wraps vertically.

The primary goal in Yars' Revenge is to break a path through the energy shield and destroy the Qotile with a hit from the Zorlon cannon. The shield is the object on the right side of the screen shaped like an arch or a shifting rectangle. It is made up of cells. To do this, the player can fire energy missiles shot from Yar which can destroy the cells in the shield or by directly coming into contact with them allowing Yar to devour them.

The backstory of the game features the Yars, a fly-like humanoid alien race that descended from the common housefly. After a space ship containing these flies crashes into the Razak solar system, radioactive dust transformed them into Yars. They gained powers that let them devour any substance and convert energy into powerful projectiles able to vaporize solid rock. The Yars discover they can fly through space and began peacefully populating planets throughout Razak.

To protect their new homes, the Yars began creating the Zorlon Cannon, but were attacked before they were able to complete it. This left them open to attack from the Qotile, who dissolved one of their planets, Planet IV, leaving it to a place now known as the neutral zone. To avenge their planet, the Yars developed a plan to use the incomplete Zorlon Cannon. The Qotile hide behind an energy shield, where they can attack with missiles and objects called "swirls".

Yars' Revenge was the first game designed by Howard Scott Warshaw for Atari, Inc.

Prior to working at Atari, Warshaw worked for Hewlett-Packard (HP) working in their networking software department. He found the work environment dull, and heard about Atari from a co-worker, understanding it as a place "where the kind of crazy stuff that [Warshaw] would do at HP would be a common occurrence". Initially, Warshaw was also more interested in the company for its available technology than for developing video games as he was not that involved in gaming prior, as he was excited by the idea of Atari doing real-time control programming.

From contemporary reviews, Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz of Electronic Games noted that the sound in the game was excellent and the graphics were "quite acceptable" but found that the game was not exciting with an objective that was repeated indefinitely, stating that "Yar is far too static" and that modern audiences would want more variety in gameplay and graphics. The review also commented on the comic book's inclusion, praising it as a high quality comic that gave context to the game. In a review in the next month's issue of the magazine, the editors briefly described the game as being "mediocre". A reviewer in the magazine Video Games had similar comments, noting fine graphics and sound effects but found the game suffered due to the repetition of the two cycles of levels. In the Brazilian magazine Micro & Video, the player found the game to have low-quality graphics and "good enough" sound effects, stating it had "too much imagination for too little game."

Lou Hudson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram stated that despite the game sounding "boringly simple" that it was "an intriguing game", predicting it to be a sleeper hit for Atari. In Ken Uston's book Ken Uston's Guide to Buying and Beating the Home Video Games (1982), the author praised the game for its "superior graphics" and its addictive nature. Olivier Chazoule of the French video game magazine Tilt also commented on the games addictive qualities, and found Yars' Revenge as combining both familiar and "a pinch of revolutionary gameplay concepts" to make it a very interesting game.

T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Warshaw has included Yars aliens as a secret in both games. Warshaw was developing a sequel to the game in 1983 titled Saboteur which was converted into a video game based on The A-Team to fulfill a licensing obligation.

Warshaw left Atari in 1984. He did not return to the video game industry until 1999, working at The 3DO Company as the director on games like BattleTanx: Global Assault (1999) and WarJetz (2001) and has worked various other jobs, including as a photographer, a real estate banker, a film director since.