Reviving retro: the art and science of recharging Atari’s classic games for modern audiences

How do you modernize a 40-year-old arcade classic without losing its magic? Hi, I’m Augustas Vachauzas, the lead game designer from SneakyBox game development and porting studio headquartered in Kaunas, Lithuania. I’m excited to share how our team at SneakyBox approached remastering the Atari Recharged series by balancing nostalgia and innovation, creating modern visuals, designing for co-op play, perfecting the soundtracking, building replayability and new game modes as well as ensuring cross-title coherence.

The Atari Recharged series breathes new life into iconic arcade classics like Breakout, Berzerk, Centipede, and more. This series is a thrilling reimagining of these timeless classics, modernizing their look and feel while keeping the pulse-pounding gameplay that made them legends in the first place. With vibrant visual overhauls, electrifying soundtracks, and modern mechanics—introducing power-ups, leaderboards, and co-op modes, the series delivers a fresh yet nostalgic experience for both retro fans and new players alike.

When Atari approached us at SneakyBox, we were pumped to take on the challenge of updating these classics. Our goal was to make each game feel fresh, yet faithful to their roots, offering vibrant reimagining that respect the legacy of Atari’s rich gaming history. Whether you're smashing blocks in Breakout or blasting your way through Centipede, we aimed to recreate the magic of these timeless games in a way that feels relevant today.

Of course, reviving these classics for a modern audience came with its challenges. In this article, I’ll share our insights into what design philosophies and technical solutions our team implemented and what we learned along the way.

Balancing nostalgia and innovation

Modernizing the gameplay of 80s classics without losing their core identity is a complex challenge. It requires a careful balance between respecting the original mechanics and seamlessly integrating modern elements that today’s players expect. Each game presents unique roadblocks, but most often the challenge revolves around the speed and pace of gameplay. This includes moment-to-moment actions like movement, offensive and defensive abilities, short-term goals as well as the overall playtime of a session, and the wealth of content from replay value.

It can be tough to nail the mechanics of an old school arcade game, set the right tone, and make it compelling beyond one, two sessions. Movement can be especially tricky in arcade games, because there’s a floatiness you need to leave in there for them to feel like the originals. That doesn’t always track with modern gameplay sensibilities.

Take Berzerk: Recharged as an example. One of the main hurdles was reworking the original aiming mechanics. On the Atari 2600, with its large, blocky pixels, it made sense to move the character in the direction projectiles fired, directly aligned with the gun barrel. However, when our developer team tried to recreate this control scheme for a modern audience, it felt awkward and unresponsive during our early testing phases. So, we made the switch to implement a more contemporary twin-stick control scheme. This gave us the flexibility to keep the original game’s theme but bring in the fast, fluid mechanics that modern players expect.

Berzerk (1980)

Berzerk: Recharged

Another challenge our studio faced was adapting to the acceleration curve to work with a trackball, mouse and other controller types in Quantum: Recharged. If you make it work one way, it might be too easy on one controller type while unplayable on the other so we had to find a middle ground solution which could be used by all controllers.

Quantum (1982)

Quantum: Recharged

Yars: Recharged was also a special case. We had to build up a lot of new gameplay scenarios and the game took a shift to puzzle-like game design in the later levels, because the movement systems suited it (it was far more efficient to get in close to every enemy once you knew how maneuverable the character is).

Yars (1982)

Yars: Recharged

Besides these game-specific hurdles, our development team also faced the broader challenge of ensuring the entire Recharged series had a cohesive feel. After further talks with Atari our crew came to an agreement that we should set up a good base that would later be used on all games. So, a common UI, sounds, and other systems have been created that can be reused and fast forward the initial stages of each project development.

Modern visuals for classic games

The greatest challenge when it comes to art and games from this era is that the games themselves don’t fully represent the fantasy they’re portraying. What I mean by this is that the graphics are so limited you can’t really discern (in most cases) what the characters are, what the theming is, what actions are being performed. Fortunately, these games were packed with supplementary material to put that fantasy forward. So, to get a grasp on what the games are and what they should look like we rely on research into box art and artist, text write ups in the manuals, arcade cabinet design, marketing materials, TV commercials, etc. Anything that can give us a better idea of what the game’s theme is our team will look for it.

Examples of inspiration: advertisement for Yars Revenge (1981) And Berzerk artwork (1982)

For the Atari Recharged series, our goal was to reimagine these iconic games by enhancing their visuals, creating an experience that feels both modern and remains authentically retro. Quantum: Recharged serves as a prime example of how we approached this challenge.

The original game never really had a home console port, and the in-game graphics were simplistic and minimalistic. So, the designers had very little to go on and had to draw inspiration from the original arcade cabinet which had a gorgeous side panel artwork that we used as our basis. This artwork, with its bright neon lines and cosmic, geometric designs, captured the imagination and essence of the game’s theme. We started by recreating the original art style, then putting a more contemporary bright color twist on it that’s become synonymous with arcade titles in the genre after Geometry Wars and Super Stardust.

Original arcade cabinet of Quantum and key art for Quantum: Recharged

Generally, our team starts thinking about key art and cover art early in a project to help the team envision the game’s look and feel. Our artists use a creative process to incorporate 80s theming, and elements like shaders, sprite shapes, and even game design choices often evolve based on cover art. For Quantum, our initial prototype was close to the original, but compared to the artwork, it felt awfully slow. So, the decision was made to change gameplay drastically and make it zippier.

With nostalgic titles that evoke a feeling rather than specific imagery, understanding that nostalgia is essential. For us, this meant a) researching each title as deeply as possible, b) developing an art pipeline based on prior titles to ensure cohesion across Recharged games, and c) creating thorough documentation to help new team members onboard, allowing for flexibility and fresh perspectives.

Designing for co-op play

Another challenge our team faced was transforming classic single-player experiences into engaging multiplayer and co-op modes. The difficulty of implementing these features varies greatly depending on the game, because some of them have multiplayer functionality (home port or arcade machine even) while others were designed strictly for solo play.

For the games that didn’t have built-in multiplayer, the development team basically did a course of additional playtesting during the prototype stage to come up with a clear direction. Fundamental questions were also to be considered: Should the multiplayer component allow both players to be equally capable, or should we aim for an asymmetric approach where each player has a unique role? Should scoring be combined for cooperative play or remain competitive in any game mode? Should players work together be able to help one another or should the focus be on versus-style gameplay?
 
Once the development team has figured out how the multiplayer component will work, the next large challenge is balancing the game to fit all the modes and modifiers including when playing in co-op. This balancing act is a massive undertaking due to how we handle modifiers in our games, which can drastically change gameplay dynamics. However, achieving this balance always resulted in a more rewarding and dynamic experience for players.

Caverns of Mars is a great example of outside the box co-op implementation, because it’s asymmetric and makes the game somewhat more difficult. That said, it grants a rewarding experience, because players need to interact and communicate with one another. One player controls the steering of the descending ship, while the other one can only trail behind, affecting the ship’s handling. Every decision about which route to take, which power ups to pursue and what enemies to engage with becomes a team decision. Yes, there’s a “captain” of sorts, but the game does become a team effort.

Caverns of Mars

Designing multiplayer features for the Atari Recharged series comes with technical challenges, but we’ve developed efficient strategies to address them. Our core mechanics don’t require major changes at the multiplayer stage because we integrate multiplayer from the start, focusing on preemptively solving potential issues. The game modifiers are saved for the final balancing phase, adding them after thorough testing. This approach often leads to interesting ideas based on player feedback.

Soundtracking the retro experience

Modernizing the sound design and music for the Atari Recharged series required striking a balance between creating a fresh audio experience and preserving the iconic sound that defined the originals. The originals always placed emphasis on sound effects tied to player actions instead of music due to hardware limitations. We at SneakyBox have kept that spirit in the recharged series with the help of talented composers, clever use of sampling old audio or recreating the feeling of the sound effects and when they are triggered.

Quantum: Recharged was a tricky case where our studio decided quite early on that we wanted a dynamic soundtrack that reacted to how well the player was doing. Our team achieved this by splitting the songs into stem layers and having them play in combination based on the active combo multiplier score. This led to quite a few pacing hurdles where getting hit by an enemy not only lost players' valuable lives, but also put a wrench in their mood to keep playing if the music cut out. So, it was a delicate matter of fine-tuning to reach that balance.

Quantum: Recharged. A high score multiplier made the soundtrack play in full, increasing the tension for players with a lot of enemies on screen

When analyzing the original audio elements to determine what to preserve and what to enhance our team takes a research-based approach. Since the original games are so primitive we often research both the arcade roots and home console variants, as well as related materials like art in the instruction manual, the box, advertisements and TV commercials to find visual themes or audio chimes that work as a spice of nostalgia for the soundtracks. Berzerk: Recharged was a case of loving the cheesiness of the original 1982 commercial, it didn’t fit in our vision of the modern game, so we just left some uplifting melodic nods in the soundtrack. Get a feel for it by watching this commercial for Berzerk (Atari 2600 Commercial).

Certain sound elements proved particularly challenging to modernize. Take Evil Otto (the main antagonist of Berzerk) had a digitized voice way back in the arcade days which was innovative. The creative team had to go through a lot of iteration to capture that style of sound for the voice filter before landing on our winning pick. To enhance or recreate classic sounds, our developers used a mix of modern techniques and tools. We had a talented sound engineer and music producer react to our early gameplay as compared to the original footage and built up the sound via digital processing and foley sound effects in combination. The voice processing for Otto teasing the player and callouts for powerups was a combination of metal sound samples and bitrate crush filters.

Evil Otto (the main antagonist of Berzerk) and in the original game

One of the biggest takeaways in regard to audio specifically for us is how much theming one can recreate from the surrounding materials like the manual, art, advertisements, etc. It really is a wealth of information to help capture the feeling of the original game.

Building replayability and new game modes

Another important aspect when revitalizing the classics is creating replayability for modern players. Our development team had to add value to the score-chasing element; since Atari Recharged games don’t rely on charging quarters, we focused on designing gameplay scenarios, powerups, challenge loops, and customizable modifiers to increase engagement. The challenge with each Recharged title was adapting this framework to suit each game’s unique mechanics.

Our design process relies heavily on building up two versions of the game: one that’s completely faithful to the original, and the other that’s a modern game with the theming of the original. We aim to find a balance that offers the best of both worlds. Game modes are a huge part of finding that ratio. With the earlier titles we were more upfront about the intent of the modes, and as our team “recharged” more games, it was blended more. For example, the shift to a general Arcade mode (but letting players choose their modifiers) led players, who typically only tried the Classic mode, to try out more of a recharged experience.

One of the challenges in designing new modes was ensuring they felt distinct but still connected to the core gameplay loop. We approach the modes as functions to help players enjoy the game mechanics in full. The underlying mechanics and challenges players face are the same across all modes, but throwing players into the deep end of Arcade (like the old titles sometimes did) just isn’t sensible in modern day. To address this, for example, with Missions in the later Recharged titles we added a more gradual difficulty curve for players who prefer that approach. Subsequently if a player runs into challenges in the later stages of Arcade mode that seem impossible, they can go through the Missions mode, ramping up their skillset on how to solve problems on the fly and eventually practice the cluster they couldn’t deal with on Arcade in isolation. In turn, opening up the doors for reaching higher scores.

Quantum: Recharged. In Missions mode we start off the game too easily and introduce new enemies, spawning patterns and timers with each mission.

Game modes, powerups, multiplayer support and leaderboards were all injected into the original game formulas to boost replayability since we were aiming to recreate an Arcade experience. That said, early on in our internal testing the development team found that modifiers (even if subtle ones) were the most refreshing addition for anyone who’s been playing the game for a while. So, we made changes to how the enemy waves are randomized and offered gameplay modifiers to players in every title.

Our biggest takeaway was that building replayability requires a deep understanding of player engagement. Listening to player feedback and being open to unexpected gameplay strategies made the games more exciting. The SneakyBox team also learned that offering players control over modifiers and game modes keeps the experience fresh and appealing, proving that a flexible approach to design is essential when modernizing classic titles.

Key takeaways

As outlined at the start, one of the biggest hurdles is walking the fine line between nostalgia and innovation—updating the games in a way that appeals to modern players while preserving the soul of the originals. Key challenges included ensuring that the visual style remains consistent throughout the series and introducing new gameplay and features such as multiplayer modes, even in titles that weren't initially designed to accommodate them. These updates aimed to increase replayability and relevance for today’s gaming audience.

Not having original game source assets or design documentation made it complex to understand the core principles of what makes Atari games what they are. We managed to solve this by getting our hands on all available material that surrounded its release and marketing. Understanding the message which was sent to people through marketing materials was a core part of making these series happen.

Our key learnings centered on how the team adapted our game design process to develop two versions of each game: one that’s completely faithful to the original, and another that reimagines the classic with modern elements while preserving its core theme. This helped us greatly in creating something completely new, yet somehow nostalgic, ensuring that the Atari Recharged games retained their authentic Atari flavor. Recognizing that the core mechanics were already solid, our innovation didn’t come from inventing something entirely new but from making the familiar feel fresh and exciting. At SneakyBox, innovation came from creating a new art style which represented the fantasy that was created years ago.