River Raid is title that should bring back memories for old school gamers. The original was released in 1982 for the Atari 2600 video game console. One of the earliest overhead scrolling shooters, a genre many thought that classic console could not do, River Raid set standards. Many of those standards are still followed today in this genre. A fan has made a remake back in 2019 and recently updated.
River Raid puts you in control of a plane behind enemy lines. You must stay low to the surface of the water to avoid being an easy target. This means touching the riverbanks or other obstacles like trees, will result in losing a life. This brings up a lot of challenge that the overhead scrolling shooter genre would almost eliminate completely.
RiverRaid Reloaded continues that tradition of low to the ground flying. The graphics are obviously updated, along with music. You can still speed up and slow down your plane as you see fit, though obviously, you cannot come to a full stop.
Today, programmers do not really care about the size of their games. Storage is no longer a concern, at least not one that we hear about often. RiverRaid Reloaded originally released at a size of 128 kb (this article is probably going to be bigger than that). The new updated version comes in at 880 kb.
Sadly, I have no clue what is in that extra memory. I am assuming it is small graphical and audio improvements. Maybe more levels later in the game.
What is here should entice fans of the genre, or those that remember the classic version. Considering the original was ported to almost any platform back then that would run it.
While not official, we can now add modern platforms to that list of ports.
Source: Itch.io via IndieRetroNews
