Gravitar is a color vector graphics arcade game released by Atari, Inc. in 1982. The player controls a small blue spacecraft in a fictional solar system with several planets to explore. If the player moves his ship into a planet, he will be taken to a side-view landscape. Unlike many other shooting games, gravity plays a fair part in Gravitar: the ship will be pulled slowly to the deadly star in the overworld, and downward in the side-view levels. In the side-view levels, the player has to destroy red bunkers that shoot constantly, and can also use the tractor beam to pick up blue fuel tanks. Once all of the bunkers are destroyed, the planet will blow up, and the player will earn a bonus. Once all planets are destroyed, the player will move onto another solar system.
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Incredibly ambitious for the time, featuring what we'd later refer to as a hub world connecting half a dozen different missions, but the floaty controls from Asteroids are bumped up to 11, and the gravity and environments ask you for precision on the level of Lunar Lander, while you're being targeted by ships and bunkers. It's just way too much shit going on, and playing this you're usually gonna just find yourself careening into walls, or in the chance you avoid them, immediately being hit by a projectile from an enemy (actually shooting down enemies is 90% of the time out of the question since it forces you away from the constant movement juggling you have maintain to not die).
Cool ideas but none of it really comes together all that well in the end, it's just way too demanding and annoying to play.
Game #188