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Image: Atari

Atari will always be an iconic gaming brand, but it has definitely acquired a bit of a bum reputation over the last couple of decades for some of its more - shall we say - 'questionable' investments. Amid a sea of bad ideas like speaker-hats, cryptocurrency and hotels, it has occasionally had some good ideas though, and the 'Recharged' series is one we definitely count among them.

The collection, which is a partnership between the developer Adamvision, the port studio Sneakybox, and Atari, updates several of Atari's most popular games, with the latest Recharged title being a modern-reimagining of the Howard Scott Warshaw's 1982 classic Yars' Revenge - called Yars: Recharged - that is coming August 23rd, 2022.

Yars' Revenge, for those of you who need a quick explainer, is a space shooter that pits the insect-like Yar against the evil enemy known as the Qotile. The goal of the game is to shoot away the Qotile's shield and blast it with your Zorlon cannon, which means deftly manoeuvring yourself out of the way of its attacks and searching for that clean break to make your move.

Back when it was first released, it was notable among Atari's library of games for being packaged with an accompanying comic book that explained its plot, an early example of narrative worldbuilding back when the majority of games - outside of text adventures - were mostly focused on replicating whatever was happening in the arcades.

According to Atari, this new reimagining Yars: Recharged will come with various new additions, such as the ability to play in co-op, collect power-ups, and complete missions (30 in total). It will also be available on various platforms, including PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X&S/Nintendo Switch/Atari VCS/and PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store). So if you want to check it out, you have a ton of options available to you. It's priced at £9.99, which seems reasonable enough, given its expanded scope.

Confusingly, this isn't the only reimagining of Yars' Revenge Atari has announced in recent memory, with Atari 50 - The Anniversary Collection also coming out later this year with its own unrelated remake, designed by Digital Eclipse head Mike Mika. It's a bit of an odd decision to commission two separate reboots, but we're certainly not complaining. You can watch the trailer for the release date announcement below.