Looking videos of the original it honestly looks more like a sketch for a game than an actual game. The giant mandalas filling the screen beg for much trippier themeing than the generic blips and "the Atarian Federation vs the Xablartian Empire". The only reason it's really interesting to anyone is because the three people who ended up with the prototypes refused to let the ROMs get dumped for a while.

Minter is a total wizard, and I hope Atari gave him enough leeway to turn this napkin doodle of a game into something that can reach into your brain and give your visual cortex a really soothing, satisfying massage. He's good at that. Scary good.