Yars' Revenge is a great game but might cause seizures

[intellicolecovisonary 32]

I love the game play and concept of Yar's Revenge, but I can't play it for long due the neutral zone's constant flashing lights and the sometimes extremely jittery movements of Yar. I have read that the flashing neutral zone is there intentionally to distract our eyes but for me it does it a bit too much.

[RickR 14,519]

Does it help if you play in black & white?

 

[chas10e 1,086]

Yeah I don't think any Atari games came with any seizure- warnings and THIS probably would be a good thread to list them.

I would think the end of Missile Command may be problematic but isn't a constant part of the game. 

https://www.epsyhealth.com/seizure-epilepsy-blog/video-games-and-seizure-safety

I would imagine with some sort of list, someone who codes can hack the game to remove the problematic elements of the game & perhaps replace the effect with something that would equally be a "reward" for defeating the Quotile in the example of Yar's Revenge.

[HDN 1,775]

For your Yar fix, @intellicolecovisonary, you might want to try the version found on the Asteroids/Pong/Yars' Revenge cartridge for Game Boy Advance, where the neutral zone seems to move more like a conveyor belt rather than jittering. The game plays a lot slower than the 2600 version (it's recreated too rather than emulated), but it is still fun. There's also the GBC port, but that seems almost more seizure-inducing to me (though your results may vary with that one). I personally have not played the GBC remake for myself.

On 2/17/2021 at 10:04 PM, chas10e said:

Yeah I don't think any Atari games came with any seizure- warnings and THIS probably would be a good thread to list them.

 

Here is what I can think of off the top of my head. There are almost definitely more:

• Yars' Revenge
• Star Ship
• Star Voyager
• Star Raiders
• Haunted House
• Missile Command
• Worm War 1
• Asteroids
• Q*Bert
• Wizard of Wor
• Night Driver
• Cosmic Ark
• Demon Attack
• Atlantis
• Video Chess
• Video Checkers
• Maze Craze
• Adventure
• Backgammon
• 3D Tic Tac Toe

Some of these games are mild, some are pretty aggressive, and some only have questionable parts at the ends of the games. They are arranged in no particular order.

[nosweargamer 7,991]

It's kinda funny. As a kid, I really liked 2600 Defender, but nowadays the flicker actually bothers my eyes. Not many games, including Yars, bother me like Defender does.

[intellicolecovisonary 32]

I have the same problems playing Wizard of Wor and Defender 2600 and of course everybody has problems with the flicker fest Pac-Man 2600.

[chas10e 1,086]

8 hours ago, intellicolecovisonary said:

I have the same problems playing Wizard of Wor and Defender 2600 and of course everybody has problems with the flicker fest Pac-Man 2600.

Todd Fry's 2600 Pac-Man was quite the technical achievement FOR THE TIME. (and he's still rightfully proud of it) There is a newer 2600 Pac-Man that is both closer to the arcade version & is flicker free. 

I haven't looked into Defender/Stargate to see if they drew the ship & the missiles at the same time to eliminate flicker.

I hadn't really ever played WOW