It is an incredible feeling to have an opportunity to work with games with such a great legacy and to have a lot of creative freedom while recharging the game but such a thing comes with a great challenge. How to avoid straying from the original arcade feeling in a gaming landscape that has been shifting without a breather for more than forty years since the game has launched? How to meet the expectations and hit the right nostalgia notes within players who have this game in their hearts?

The retro wave inspired style that oozes the energy of the 80s is a great place to start. Just as the Tron-like outline based art is a must. Award-winning video game composer Megan McDuffee came up with wonderful soundtracks and we finished off with the dash of flavor – naming all of our achievements according to various 80s rock songs. These changes were implemented in all of the games we worked on as of now (Centipede, Black Widow, Asteroids).

Atari clearly stated that the goal is to modernize the games without diverting away from the classical gameplay feel. However, it was not possible without adding subtle changes – we have visually cleaned up the screen, and added several power-ups that have received kind words from video game reviewers. However, behind all of this, the core gameplay loops from decades ago remain more or less the same.

In addition to powerups, we have also provided a level design for 30 challenges that await players in each game.