The Atari 2600 holds a major role in the history of video games, but due to its simplistic technology there aren’t a whole lot of its games that still hold up well today. One game that most certainly still does though is Activision’s River Raid. While not the first vertically scrolling shoot ’em up, River Raid did do some unique things for the time. One neat thing River Raid did was let you accelerate and decelerate in addition to maneuvering your ship left and right, making the terrain and enemies scroll faster or slower on the fly. It’s this fondness for River Raid that led developer Project R3D to want to create a modern homage to the title, which they call Bridge Strike. Today they’ve released a brand new trailer followed by a longer gameplay-focused video. Check ’em out.
As you can see, Bridge Strike retains many of the elements of River Raid like blasting baddies on the ground and in the sky, blowing up bridges, and of course being able to control your speed. But obviously the visuals have received a big upgrade including things like dynamic weather and multiple environments. It’ll also include two main modes: a RAID mode where you goal is to destroy as many bridges as possible while trying to survive, and a Campaign mode where you’ll have specific missions and goals to complete. No word on a release date just yet but you can register your interest in Bridge Strike to the developers in our forums and you can still sign up to be a beta tester over on the game’s official site.