The Pixel Ripped series has taken players back to the 1990s and 1980s, and Pixel Ripped 1978 is, fittingly, going all the way back to the 1970s where Atari reigned supreme. The latest trailer for the VR game even stars a renowned Atari programmer as he recalls some of his real time at the company, which feeds into Pixel Ripped 1978’s fictional lore.
Howard Scott Warshaw, said Atari programmer, is known for his work on Atari 2600 games like Yars’ Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and remembers a programmer named Barbara “Bug” Rivers in the trailer. Rivers didn’t exist, but she is the protagonist of Pixel Ripped 1978. The press release also touches on the video game crash of 1983 and even implies that Barbara might have had something to do with it, which Warshaw also dances around.
As was the case with the other Pixel Ripped games, players use the VR medium to interact with a virtual world as well as a video game world inside that virtual world. Here, players control Barbara and her virtual avatar that she uses to slay bugs in the Atari games she is developing in an “authentic recreation” of Atari’s Sunnyvale offices . Some of these titles are real Atari games, like Crystal Castle, Fast Freddie, and Yars’ Revenge.
There’s still no Pixel Ripped 1978 release date
The trailer still doesn’t list a release date, but it’s scheduled to release in the summer for PlayStation VR2, PC VR headsets, and the Meta Quest 2.
