Video Game / Yars Rising

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Yars Rising is the fifth entry in the Yars franchise, developed by WayForward Technologies and published by Atari. In a stark departure from the rest of the series, the game is a 2½D action-adventure platformer rather than a Shoot 'em Up, with that gameplay style being restricted to various hacking minigames. The game released on September 10, 2024 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC, and the Atari VCS microconsole.

Yars Rising follows Emi "Yar" Kimura, a college dropout who makes a living taking odd jobs as part of a group of black hat hackers. Her newest job? Install some information from the shadowy, all-powerful mega conglomerate known as QoTech Corporation at the behest of a mysterious patron. Sure, the only way to pull off the heist is to infiltrate the company and access the company's servers directly, but given the absurd payout that the team is being promised for a completed mission, it's more than worth the risk. Unfortunately, after several weeks of careful planning, the operation is botched; Emi is left trapped in a building under total lockdown and filled to the brim with security drones and personnel, all searching for their little intruder.

As she runs, sneaks, and hacks her way through the winding halls and secret labs of QoTech in a desperate bid to escape capture, Emi slowly finds herself embroiled in a large-scale intergalactic conspiracy where she uncovers not only the dark truth behind the mysterious conglomerate, but her personal ties to an insectoid alien race.

A 32-page prequel comic of the same name was published by IDW Publishing in November 2024; a preview of the comic is currently available here on Webtoon.

Trailers: Announcement Trailer, Gameplay Trailer

Yars Rising features examples of:

• Action Girl: Emi qualifies as this. While she'll occasionally have to sneak her way through sections, she quickly gains the ability to fire energy beams out of her hands, and soon turns into a badass human/insect hybrid.
• Advertising by Association: The reveal trailer touts the game as being from the "developers of Shantae [and] River City Girls".
• Animal Theme Naming: The Mobility Augments and some Biohacks are named after insects, implying Animalistic Abilities, and are sometimes Alliterative Name: Caterpillar Crawl, Grasshopper Legs, Pondskater Boots, Fly Wings, Dragonfly Dash, Mayfly, Ladybug Charm and Locket, Nymph. They're a hint as to the real source of Emi's powers.
• Anti-Hero: Emi isn't exactly a saint, as she makes a living by willingly working with a group of black hat hackers and may have done unsavory acts during her line of work. Admittedly, the Yar don't care about her past, since it allowed her to awaken the genetics they implanted in her.
• Bio-Augmentation: This is how upgrades function, with Emi gaining the ability to "bio-hack" her body, ranging from gaining abilities such as the Zorlon Shot to upgrading her physical prowess to crawl faster or jump higher. It's all possible due to her having Yar genetics, which were implanted in her at birth.
• Collision Damage: Touching enemies hurts Emi, but not the enemies.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Justified. Emi has had legal computer engineering jobs in the past, but always got fired because she's either overqualified for the position and her employers came to resent her intelligence, or she found the workload so unstimulating that she end up doing something out of boredom that prompts them to fire her anyway.
• Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: It's raining for most of this cyberpunk story, and is commented on often, like how Emi will have to redye her hair.
• The Friend No One Likes: Kyan, according to the comic. While Anthony seems to be good friends with him, the girls find him somewhat annoying (Emi's narration implies that she tolerates him more than anything else, while Mal apparently can't stand him). He used to justify his presence by being the group's benefactor and bankrolling their activities when first starting out, but after his family lost their wealth due to bad investments, he remains mostly because he'd fully ingrained himself into the group's dynamic by that point.
• Endgame+: Beating the game and loading up your clear data spawns you at the final Save Station but with the final bosses defeated, and Emi set to get the final terminals.
• Hacking Minigame: The game features several of these, most of which are Atari 2600-styled shoot em' ups in the vein of the original Yar's Revenge. It's immediately made clear in the game that this is literally what Emi is doing, as she designed her hacking program to function like such.
• Hearts Are Health: Or at least, the Hacking Minigames that give Cap Raisers for Hit Points are red Heart Symbol-themed.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Your crew explains some gameplay mechanics to you early on. At one point, Kyan explains that, in addition to acting as a punch clock, battery charger, and vending machine, the "Sync Stations" littered around the building can also act as save terminals, prompting Emi to question how saving even works in real life. He has no idea.
• Improvement +: The Nibble++ Biohack to Attack Speed Buff the Nibble attack.
• The Infiltration: Emi spent several weeks working as a low-level coder to learn the layout of the QoTech building, hiding in her office past working hours on the day of the mission to sneak into the server room.
• Late for School: The opening cutscene depicts Emi late for work after her alarm fails to wake her up due to it being unplugged.
• Luck-Based Mission: At one point you have to play an allegedly symmetrical game against an opponent who blatantly cheats (most obviously, moving at double your speed.) Having skill at the game allows you to last longer, but ultimately you win when the computer decides to allow you to.
• Meaningful Name: QoTech is a deliberate corruption of the name of Yar's antagonists, the Qotile, with Emi also being blatantly named after the Yar. By the end of the game, both become Foreshadowing.
• MegaCorp: The narration in the extended Nintendo Switch announcement trailer describes QoTech as this, with it presenting itself as a data collection and cloud streaming firm.
• The Mole: Mal turns out to be working for the aliens.
• Motion Comic: The game's opening cutscene is done in this style.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Emi shares her surname with Hiro Kimura, the box art designer for the original Yars' Revenge.
  • The game takes place in Syzygy City. "Syzygy" being what the founders of Atari Inc. originally wanted to call the company.
  • One monologue hidden in the farthest right of 14F has Emi complain that she should've kept her old job at "Nolan-Tech." Nolan Bushnell was one of Atari's original co-founders.
  • The Yar on the cover and Emi's power armored form hearken back to the player character from the 2011 reimagining.
  • The achievement for beating the unlockable Professional Mode, HSWWSH, is named after the Yars' Revenge Easter egg of the same name.
  • One of the songs is titled "Heavy Sixer." This is a fan nickname for the original model of the Atari 2600 console, called such for having six toggle switches in the front (some later models moved the difficulty toggles to the back) and having weightier components than later sixers.
  • The Sync Stations bear a striking resemblance to the first commercially sold arcade game, Computer Space.
• Oddball in the Series: Every prior entry in the franchise is a Shoot 'em Up — or, in the case of the 2011 game, a Rail Shooter — whereas Rising is a Metroidvania.
• Old Area, New Enemies: After you return to Qotech to search for the yars you need to rescue, many new and tougher enemies show up in the old locations you've previously been to, now that you have to visit them again. Emi comments on this:
  Emi: What are you guys doing here? This isn't your planet! Shoo!
• Online Alias: The hacker team that Emi is part of all have these. Emi's handle is "Yar" which is the name she gave the bug creature she uses as a tattoo and the avatar in her hacking interface. Malorie is "Mal", Anthony is "Kitbash", and Kyan is "Refresh". They don't make regular use of it in conversation, though; Malorie in particular refuses to refer to Emi by her handle on the basis that they've been close friends since they were 12.
  Emi: I call you by yours.
  Malorie: (deadpan) Mal is short for Malorie.
• Portmanteau: Emi rides the "MagneTrain" to get to work.
• Sequel Hook: Parodied slightly. Emi finds out the truth about Qotech and her connection to the Yar, but it's clear that Qotech only consider her actions a minor setback... but she's too busy getting the hell out of there to listen to the monologue about how they will have their revenge and wipe out the Earth...
• Shout-Out: Two of the achievements are named from the movie, Hackers. The first is "Mess with the best…" for defeating the final boss. The second is "HACK THE PLANET!" for hacking all terminals in the game.
• Source Music: Much of the background music consists of songs that are playing on Emi's earbuds, with the Starter Equipment first available upgrade that gives the track name and artist whenever the song changes.
• Super Drowning Skills: Emi makes it clear she can't swim. Jumping into water takes a hit out of HP. It's not until near the tail end of the game, a.k.a more than 80% progress reported, through the portal to Razak III, if you get everything available, you finally get to avert this with an Augment... which makes you able to move under water.
• Take Your Time: On the way to Storage Loft East Access, Emi can note how that's not where she needs to go and implies how she has endless time:
  Emi: I'm either lost, or intentionally procrastinating.
• The Team: The prequel comic establishes that while all of them have solid computer skills, Emi is the one who actually performs the majority of the group's hacking operations, while Anthony handles security and Mal handles the finances and oversees the general operation. Kyan used to be The Team Benefactor, but has mostly acted as The Load after his family lost their riches.
• Teleportation Sickness: After using the portal, Emi doesn't feel so good:
  Emi: Ooog, intergalactic travel apparently makes you hella nauseous.
• Terse Talker: The Yar Warrior on B2: "I'm a WARRIOR. What use have I for talk, small or otherwise?"
• Thinking Out Loud: Lampshaded. After ending communication with Mal, Emi quips about how much of a headache she's going to give QoTech, only to chide herself for talking aloud after a few seconds of awkwardly trying to explain her own joke to herself.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Even within the context of the hacking regularly being featured as a game within a game, Philip Ong mixes things up by being fought within the hacking interface, but as a game of Pong rather than a variation on traditional Yars gameplay. Granted, it feels less unexpected in retrospect, once his name appears on the scoreboard, with the first name abbreviated to just "P".
• Unlockable Difficulty Levels: Pro Mode is unlocked after beating the game, where everything deals more damage, including hacking failures, which used to deal only 5%, now deal 15%.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: In the comic, Emi introduces Mal to the reader as such.
  Emi: That's my best friend, Mal Foster. I think? That is, I think she's my best friend, not that I think that's her name. That's obviously her name. We're just very competitive.
• Walk, Don't Swim: The "travel underwater" Augment isn't swimming, it's just the ability to use all previous traversal methods underwater, but slower. That includes walking, but with an Oxygen Meter.
• Wall Jump: Grasshopper Legs allows Emi to not just slide down walls, but also jump off them.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Missile Commander looks like he's set for a rematch on the roof of QoTech, only for Mal to take his place. After the boss fight, he accompanies Philip Ong through the portal to the Yar homeworld, and is never seen again after that.
  • Similarly, most of Emi's allies stop checking in on her after she first crosses through the portal. Anthony and Kyan appear in person after the final battle, but Mrs. Davidson is never heard from again.
  • We never learn the identity of the person experimenting on a lifeless yar beneath the QoTech building, who is likely the one responsible for creating the spider boss. They seem too unhinged to have been Missile Commander, and they flee the scene without any additional reference. A close look at their dialogue character model suggests that they are one of the humanoid Qotiles like those that are regularly fought during the final leg of the game - but whether they are one of any significance isn't clarified.