The game is a homebrew homage to various games and Atari-related themes. Development began in 2013 as GTIA Blast!, a tech demo that displayed the potential of the GTIA chip's rarely utilized graphics mode. Later it evolved into a complete game, and during development it took usage of the other graphics modes, thus was renamed to AtariBlast!.

It has vertically and horizontally scrolling levels themed after classic shootemups. Features include difficulty settings, level passcodes (in a Simon Says fashion), health bar, destroyable background elements, many different powerups with a limited timeout, and numerous bonuses. Multiple versions exist with different music.