Jeff Minter on making a respectful cover

gamesindustry.biz:

Jeff Minter and Atari have history. The veteran developer worked on Atari hardware dating back to the 8-bit home computers of the early '80s and his sequels to the arcade classic Tempest have been among the publisher's most celebrated releases of the past 30 years.

So when Atari approached Minter with the idea of another Tempest 2000-like reinterpretation, he didn't require too much convincing. But rather than going for Centipede, Asteroids, or any of an array of other Atari classics that have been re-done numerous times over the years, Minter opted for a deeper cut.

"They just sent me their back catalog of titles they owned the IP to, and I went through that and chose Akka Arrh because it sounded interesting," Minters tells GamesIndustry.biz.

Akka Arrh is not a household name. In fact, Atari never actually released the original arcade game, which only made it to the prototype phase in 1982 before being mothballed and largely forgotten. But in recent years, a ROM of the game leaked online and interested parties got their first chance to actually try out the long lost title.

"I've got particular taste in games. I like abstract stuff, and this is all quite abstract," Minter says, adding, "The game itself is quite an interesting design. It's got this upstairs/downstairs thing going on where the battle starts on the top layer and then proceeds down to the bottom and you have to switch between the two surfaces to defend yourself. I quite liked that and the look of the game. It has a nice abstract feel to it. The battle took place on a geometric surface that lit up as you fired shots onto it. It just seemed quite interesting."

The arcade prototype requires a complex bit of plate-spinning from the player, and the