Akka Arrh (starring in "Also Known As Another Ralston Hally Production") is a co-op of Dave Ralston and Mike Hally. Atari from 1981/82, which never saw the light of the arcades. In fact, some tests were done, but the results were not satisfactory and the game, a kind of ante litteram defense tower, was shelved, so production never began. It was basically too complicated for the type of use it required, so it was shelved despite being practically complete. Of the original Akka Arrh, which were found in Atari warehouses in 2013, only three cabinet games survived. Become a cult object, it was the cause of enormous ups and downs among retrogaming enthusiasts, to the point that legend has it that the rom arrived. to The Dumping Union group in 2019, later emulated by MAME that same year, was obtained through theft. The three collectors in possession of the cabinets had never given the possibility of getting rid of the ROM (it was one of them who would report the crime), who nevertheless found a way to reach the Internet.
Controversies aside, the first official release of Akka Arrh occurred recently, on November 11, 2022, within the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration series. Almost simultaneously with its release, it was announced that Jeff Minter was working on a more modern reinterpretation of the game, which had been entrusted to him by Atari itself. Let's try to find out if the author of Attack of the Mutant Camels and Ancipital managed to make sense of this whole story in the Akka Arrh review.
Gameplay
The original Akka Arrh told a kind of history which we do not believe has been preserved in this remake, since there is practically no trace of it in the game. In essence, Minter has maintained the structure of the original, but has changed many things, adding many of his own and reaching an almost absolute level of abstraction. So we still have the central turret, of course shaped like a bull, and the levels are still abstract geometries, but the game itself works in a completely different way. As? The player fires bombs whose explosions create a shockwave that radiates in a different geometric pattern for each level. The enemies involved explode in turn, starting a new shockwave for a chain effect that can last several seconds (in some cases for the entire duration of the plan). If no enemy is hit and the combo is interrupted with each bomb thrown, but you can continue using different systems, in particular using the secondary weapon, that is, direct projectiles, available in limited quantities (they are recharged by destroying enemies with explosions ), which do not produce explosions of their own but can be used to eliminate survivors.
Il game It is as simple as it is attractive. Once you have learned the few concepts necessary to play, it doesn't take much to get carried away by the flow of the combos, that is, for the mere pleasure of seeing the screen fill with lights and colors. The game immediately invites us to think not so much about how to eliminate enemies, but how to create chains of increasingly longer explosions, which allow us to greatly multiply the score. From this point of view it almost seems that we are facing a puzzle game, rather than a shooter. The idea is precisely to create something dedicated to lovers of point challenges, offering a progression based more on the conformation of the levels than on the unlocking of bonuses, but present in the form of collectible objects that grant various advantages, such as indirect projectiles, More defenses and all that.
The basic objective is not to steal or destroy the green capsules, crowded inside the base, located under the turret. When the enemies reach you, it is possible to go down to scare them away, always being careful not to completely lose sight of what is happening outside. As the levels progress, fifty in total, the enemies become increasingly more aggressive and variations are introduced, such as surfaces over which the shock wave cannot propagate or creatures that fly above the explosions and can only be hit. with bullets
Jeff Minter
Akka Arrh is a work of Jeff Minter, which translates into a simple, immediate and captivating game, with a deliberately psychedelic style. To understand his underlying philosophy, which is what has always characterized the good Yak, just think about how he created music: he took audio samples from his personal collection accumulated throughout his career, things from third parties and his own things, so he created a sequencer that mixes the samples with those of various musical instruments, more or less following what happens on the screen. The effect is deliberately abstract, certainly not reducible to the classical concept of a sequence of musical pieces, but in its own unique and highly creative way that, combined with the graphics, made of pure shapes, colorful explosions and a multitude of effects on the background. -First-class visual effects create a decidedly acidic final effect, very reminiscent of the author's latest works such as Moose Life and POLYBIUS.
Akka Arrh is proud of its uniqueness, which however also has its limits because it closes the experience in a very small area. Perhaps they would have benefited from more methods, but asking for them seems to be victims of the usual bulimia of an insatiable video game, which, faced with a very strong work of authorship, still kicks. For once we can even avoid doing it.
Conclusions
Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam, epic games store, playstation store, Xbox Store, Nintendo eShop Price 19,99 € Holygamerz.com 8.0 Readers (4) 9.0 your voteAkka Arrh is the acid reinterpretation of an arcade game that never made it to arcades, another psychedelic trip from Yak that its fans will only appreciate. You know the experience is for you when you find yourself firing bombs and projectiles only to see kaleidoscopes of lights and shapes superimposed on the screen, your score growing along with the feeling that you are looking at the work of someone who inevitably understood the medium better than you. you and that is capable of capturing each time that essence that the world of video games seems to have forgotten, removing it from enjoyment because it is inexplicably sincere and direct in its fundamental discursive core. Definitely limited as a product, Akka Arrh is symptomatic in its desire to address an almost extinct player, in its splendid outdatedness that sees the game as an immediate experience, dynamic and aesthetic at the same time.
PRO
- A pure arcade
- Pure psychedelia, in the purest Minter style
- The combined system
AGAINST
- As a product it is inevitably limited.
