About two years of development time, albeit with a fourty-year break.
Atari as a company has never been particularly shy about remembering, reiterating and subsequently re-profiting from their past video game development efforts, especially in the form of well-received compilation titles like Atari 50.
However, even they have only rarely returned to long-cancelled unreleased projects, even if playable prototypes of them already existed. The only known known exception would be their cancelled arcade game Akka Arrh, which was eventually released in 2022; 40 years after it was originally supposed to.
Aiming For Style
Akka Arrh's title originated as a tongue-in-cheek acronym for "Also Known As Another Ralston Hally", referencing the Atari designers Dave Ralston and Mike Hally who first proposed it. Conceived under the working title Target Outpost, it was intended as a fixed-screen shooter with a layered defensive concept centered on protecting a strategic stronghold.
Said strategic stronghold is fort called the Sentinel, wherein players control the titular Akka Arrh cannon, which can't move, but aim and fire in any direction to repel waves of invading enemies. When attackers breach the perimeter, the camera switches to a more zoomed-in view of a lower field for localized combat before returning to the wider defense view.
Akka Arrh's design emphasized precision bombing and chain reactions, with players only able to attain a high score by triggering cascading in a sort of "combo system". Consequently, however, the game would become fairly difficult: Distinct enemy behaviors, limited ammunition, and the dual-scale arenas distinguished it from other early-1980s shooters.
Missing The Mark
Said difficulty would eventually lead to the game's downfall: When the working prototype of Akka Arrh was received limited test-market exposure, players were reportedly overwhelmed by its design, deeming it "too difficult". Developer Atari, Inc. consequently shelved the game and shifted its resources to other arcade titles, with only three of the prototype cabinets remaining.
Atari, Inc. would go on to have a turbulent history; after the video game crash of 1984, the original company from 1972 sold its assets and IP to Tramel Technology Ltd. (subsequently renamed Atari Corporation), while the logo and brand name stayed with the original company, now called Atari Games, before both were later purchased by Hasbro Interactive in 1998 and later by Infrogrames SA in 2001, who subsequently renamed themselves to Atari SA.
After many failed experiments involving gambling and blockchain technology, the studio would start trying to leverage the nostalgia associated with the Atari name and games. One small part of this nostalgia push was their decision to license the title to developer Llamasoft and designer Jeff Minter, who finally finished Akka Arrh by turning it into a modern wave-shooter with updated visuals and mechanics, using his signature psychedelic style seen in his Tempest revivals.
Finding New Footing
Jeff Minter's Akka Arrh would finally be published by Atari in February 2023, after the unfinished original arcade prototype was included in 2022's Atari 50 collection. It launched across multiple platforms including Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One & Series X|S, and Atari's own struggling Atari VCS, thus finally making the long-dormant arcade prototype available to the wider public as a fully-realized title.
Critical reception was mixed, but leaned positive: Many reviewers praised the psychedelic visuals (while also acknowledging that Minter had apparently learned from previous criticism by programming settings to avoid sensory overload), score-chasing design and the way it realised its vintage arcade roots, while others found it somewhat niche or lacking broader replay appeal.
Looking forward, Atari has indicated interest in mining its legacy catalogue for further revival projects, and designer Jeff Minter is known to have selected Akka Arrh as a "template" for resurrecting lost arcade-era concepts, suggesting that sequels or similar reinterpretations of cancelled and unreleased Atari titles could follow.