Jeff Minter, the legendary indie developer who's been doing his own weird thing since the early 1980s, has a new weird thing in the works: a remake of I, Robot, an arcade shooter originally released by Atari in 1984.
I, Robot challenges players to find their way across a "3D kaleidoscopic visualizer" while dodging the gaze of the all-seeing eye, which will blast you into oblivion if you jump while it's watching. Escape the visualizer and you'll have to blast your way through a tube crawling with enemies determined to stop you. It all sounds very "classic Atari," jazzed up with Minter's addition of "arena levels that will ignite your synapses with onslaughts of lethal enemies."
The I, Robot remake will include 55 platforming and arena levels, with bonus tube-shooting between each, wrapped in procedural music, "Llamasoft's unique brand of mind-melting visuals," and online leaderboard. And if it all gets a bit much, you can opt instead for the "Ungame" mode, which will let you horse around inside the chaos with no enemies around.
"I, Robot — a reimagining of an obscure Atari arcade cabinet featuring a robot who has problems with authority — is quintessential Minter," said Atari's vice president of games Ethan Sterns, and even though I haven't played the remake myself, I have to agree. Even if I knew absolutely nothing about it, I'm pretty sure I would look at the announcement trailer and immediately think, "Yeah, that's a Minter game."
He has a very distinct style rooted in the earliest days of home computing, as seen in trailers for earlier releases like Akka Arrh and Polybius, and while it can be divisive—Minter's infamous Space Giraffe earned a 2/10 rating from OXM, and a 92% from us—it's also proven enduring: In 2024, Atari released an "interactive documentary" about Minter and his work, reflecting the impact he's had on the indie game scene.
The original I, Robot, for the record, may not count as an Atari "classic" in the strictest sense:https://www.pcgamer.com/ftcs-new-disclosure-guidelines-for-influencers-leaves-no-room-for-misunderstanding/ Wikipedia says it flopped badly at launch, and no more than 1,000 units were made. But in the years since then, it's earned retroactive praise for its advanced graphics—it was apparently the first commercial videogame rendered with real-time 3D polygons—and was recently included in Atari's 50th anniversary compilation.
Jeff Minter's remake of I, Robot doesn't have a release date yet, but it's expected to be out this spring on PC and various consoles, including—of course—the Atari VCS.
