Yars' Revenge is a shooting game made by Howard Scott Warshaw, who also made the infamous E.T. Unlike that map to Area 51, this game was surprisingly one of the classics.
Developer Initials#
With the game set on 6 or 7, kill the Swirl in mid-flight and a flickering black line should appear along its Y-axis. Now, stand upon it and hold any vertical direction before the status screen appears. If done right, the letters "HSWWSH" will replace the score, which some know as referring to developer Howard Scott Warshaw.
Game Code Used as Graphics#
The Neutral Zone, ostensibly looking like a random mess, is in fact composed of a portion of the game's ROM that contains program code, continuously processed to look less static. Howard Scott Warshaw revealed in an interview that reusing program data as graphics was necessary to save the limited ROM space, but also raised worries at Atari that showing program code on screen could constitute a copyright violation. He defended his case, saying that the data was heavily processed before displaying, making it tough to decode, and that if someone could even figure the code out, then "they deserved it!".7
Here's an in-depth breakdown of the Neutral Zone that explores the challenge of decoding it. Watch on YouTube
References#
- Atari ad - Electronic Games, Volume 1, Number 4, June 1982↩︎
- VIDEO SCREEN: STOP THE ALIEN SLAVE TRADE - Computer & Video Games, Issue 9, July 1982↩︎
- Part 2: TV Game Graffiti [~1984 Japan Edition] | Video Game First Generation - Cominy / Blog↩︎
- Atari to start Japan sales - Associated Press, April 12, 1983↩︎
- O Atari da Polyvox já está pronto "Polyvox's Atari is now ready" - Folha de S.Paulo, September 7, 1983↩︎
- Atari 2600 VCS catlog - Polyvox - 1983 - Portuguese↩︎
- DP Interviews... Howard Scott Warshaw - Digital Press, 1997↩︎
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The Yars' Revenge series | |
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Atari 2600 |
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Game Boy Advance |
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