Jeff Minter, the legendary, iconoclastic arcade recreation designer, is again with one other Atari remake. As soon as once more, the writer of the basic Tempest 2000 and its sequels has dug deep into Atari’s again catalog and unearthed a really deep lower to use his intense, psychedelic spin to. Final time, it was the notoriously troublesome, unreleased curio Akka Arrh; this time it’s I, Robotic, a historic however failed recreation from considered one of Atari’s nice minds.
I, Robotic is a 1984 arcade recreation designed by Dave Theurer, creator of Missile Command and the unique Tempest. Theurer beloved to push the technological boundaries of early gaming and I, Robotic holds the excellence of being the primary business online game rendered with real-time, flat-shaded (versus wireframe) 3D polygon graphics — eight years earlier than Sega’s Virtua Racing and a decade earlier than PlayStation made this sort of 3D gaming a mass-market proposition.
However I, Robotic was a flop, and fewer than 1,000 cupboards of the sport have been produced. Its uncommon design has the participant controlling a robotic, hopping round mazes and flipping the colour of tiles whereas taking pictures at enemies and avoiding the gaze of Huge Brother’s large eye.
Going by the trailer, Minter’s tackle I, Robotic is often distinctive, upping the tempo, taking liberties with the design, and incorporating components of his personal video games like Gridrunner and the Tempest remakes, in addition to his trademark procedural techno music and bleary psychedelic visuals. Naturally, the robotic hero has been given the top of an ox, too. (Minter, whose firm is known as Llamasoft, has a long-standing obsession with animals of the ungulate household.)
In between ranges, gamers will dip right into a trippy tube shooter for some Tempest-style motion, whereas the discharge additionally consists of what Minter is asking the Ungame, a visualizer that permits the participant to mess around with the sport’s sights and sounds with out worrying about enemies. (The unique I, Robotic additionally included a chill secondary mode, a drawing device known as Doodle Metropolis.)
Minter’s I, Robotic might be launched in spring 2025 on Nintendo Change, PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Collection X, and Atari’s personal VCS system. In line with the trailer, there’ll be a PlayStation VR2 model, too.
