Gravitar

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Gravitar

Developer(s)	Atari
Publisher(s)	Atari
Designer(s)	Mike Hally and Rich Adam
Platform(s)	Arcade, Atari 2600, Vectrex (Clone as Gravitrex)
Release date	1982
Genre(s)	Multi-directional shooter
Mode(s)	One or two players alternating turns
Input methods	Five buttons
Display	Horizontal, vector

Gravitar is a shoot 'em up arcade game released by Atari in 1982.

It was the first of over twenty games Mike Hally designed and produced for Atari, including Star Wars.

In the game, the player controls a small blue spacecraft. The game starts 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.

The player has five buttons: two to rotate the ship left or right, one to shoot, one to activate the thruster, and one for both a tractor beam and force field.

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.

The player will lose a life if he crashes into the terrain or gets hit by an enemy's shot, and the game will end immediately if fuel runs out.

For the main part, Gravitar wasn't very popular. Many existing arcade machines were converted to Black Widow, which utilized the same hardware. Its only port was to the Atari 2600. Originally, it was only offered to members of the Atari Fan Club, but in the late 80s, when Atari was attempting to revive the Atari 2600, it was released to the public. During that time, the games had a red label, whereas the previous version had a silver label. Because the silver label version was released only to Atari Club members, it was harder to find than the red label version. Today, the silver label version is considered a collectors item.

Gravitar was the direct source of inspiration for many other computer games including Thrust, Oids and Gravity Force.

Dan Coogan, of Phoenix, AZ set a new Gravitar world record, scoring 8,029,450 points on 12/23/2006, playing for 23 hours and 15 minutes. The previous world record was 4,722,200, which reigned for 24 years, set by Ray Mueller of Boulder, CO on 12/4/1982, playing for 12 hours and 21 minutes.^[1]

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