Gravitar

Atari, 1982

Interesting game for an Asteroids fan since it uses similar inputs: the same button setup but the hyperspace/shield button of Asteroids/Deluxe is here used as a shield/tractor combination tool. The original game is using color vector hardware – almost exactly the same as the Atari games Black Widow and Space Duel – and works really well in grayscale, too. Portrait mode and using a small display as such however is more of a problem: your ship is pretty small even on a 19″ vector monitor but tiny on the Vectrex in portrait mode. Also since the planets have gravity – this gravity named the game after all – it is not possible to rotate these planets to increase the size of the screen output for portrait mode, just feels weird if the ‘gravity’ is pushing you to the left or right. Luckily only a subset uses this type of gravity, the solar system overview, some tiny moonlets or the reactor do not and could be improved upon.

So this is one of the very few games which I recommend to play in landscape mode if you really want to get into the game. Be warned, though: this is one really tough game. If memory serves I even remember reading that the original developers were not able to get through their Gravitar systems alive w/o cheating.

Rich Adam did the coding and M. Hally was the project leader for this game and quite interestingly from a historic perspective Hally made the entire contents of his ‘Gravitar binder’ public with the help of Dan Coogan, a treasure trove of information about how Atari developed arcade games back then, and about Gravitar in particular. Just peeked at the scans again and immediately found an internal memo. for trademark searches for names, for example. The names being: ‘1. Marauder, 2. Solar Battle and 3. Graviton’. And as we know none of these were the final ones.

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Input

Note: if the menu uses a 5-button controller as input (expert option) Gravitar respects this as an overriding option, too.

Buttons

• Button 1: turn left
• Button 2: turn right
• Button 3: thrust
• Button 4: fire
• All 4 buttons at the same time or joystick-y: shield/tractor

Digital Joystick

• Button 2: shield/tractor
• Button 3: thrust
• Button 4: fire
• Joystick-x: turn left/right

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Options

• Bonus Ship: None / 10000 / 20000 / 30000
• Difficulty: Easy / Hard
• Lives: 3 / 4 / 5 / 6
• Reset Highscores
• Input: Buttons / Digital Joystick
• Game Info: ”                           Welcome to Gravitar, the colour vector arcade game by Atari.               Gravitar is regarded as a very difficult game compared to some of its Vector-based cousins released during that period in time: Space Duel, Quantum, Major Havoc and Black Widow. They are all housed in similar shaped cabinets, and share quite a bit of hardware. After its release, feedback from operators was that customers simply were not playing the game due to its perceived difficulty, the machine was not generating money for anyone. Word got around, and the sales of the cabinets dried up quickly, leaving Atari with inventory sitting in the factory. In fact such was the commercial failure of Gravitar that many were converted to Black Widows using official kits released by Atari.                I myself am also not overly fond of Gravitar (but do like it somewhat) but when I read that the original programmers also could not beat all levels of their own game I gave up playing it in earnest. Once again a game diminished by greed – or maybe just because of the economy at the end of the golden era of arcade gaming and the turmoil Atari went through at the time.                Still, I might get back to this game one day and try to beat it – all level variations – one day.               The internal coding is also once again odd. This game again – like other, later Atari vectors – does not use a fixed framerate. So once again I not only had to massage the incoming dvg data to get an output that is as stable as possible on a Vectrex but also make certain I grab it at the right time. And that the game outputs a decent framerate and the internal syncs/delays keep working. Well, I am happy with the result once again and it is nice to have on the Vectrex for the occasional game. I have never made it to the invisible levels so I can only hope that they indeed are invisible.. (if you are an ace Gravitar player and get that far do let me know, please).                                        “

Localization

//NAME="GRAVITAR"
//

GERMAN[] = {
    { 0, 0, "Schwierigkeit: Einfach"},
    { 0, 0, "Schwierigkeit: Schwer"},
    { 0, 0, 0}
};

FRENCH[] = {
    { 0, 0, "Difficulté: Modérée"},
    { 0, 0, "Difficulté: Elevée"},
    { 0, 0, "                           Bienvenue dans Gravitar, le jeu d'arcade vectoriel et en couleur d'Atari.               Gravitar est considéré comme un jeu très difficile par rapport à certains de ses cousins également vectoriels, sortis à la même époque : Space Duel, Quantum, Major Havoc et Black Widow. Ils sont tous intégrés dans des bornes de forme similaire et partagent une certaine quantité de matériels. Après sa sortie, les exploitants ont fait savoir que les clients ne jouaient tout simplement pas au jeu en raison de la difficulté qu'il inspirait, et que la machine ne générait de l'argent pour personne. La rumeur s'est répandue et les ventes des bornes se sont rapidement effondrées, laissant Atari à la tête d'un stock non écoulé au sein de son usine. En fait, l'échec commercial de Gravitar a été tel que beaucoup de bornes ont été converties en Black Widow en utilisant les kits officiels publiés par Atari.                 Sans être un inconditionnel de Gravitar (tout en l'appréciant), j'avoue que quand j'ai lu que les programmeurs étaient incapables eux-mêmes de finir tous les niveaux de leur propre jeu, j'ai renoncé à y jouer sérieusement. Une fois de plus, il s'agit d'un jeu qui a souffert de l'âpreté au gain - ou peut-être juste de mesures d'économie à la fin de l'âge d'or des jeux d'arcade et de la tourmente dans laquelle se trouvait Atari à l'époque. Il se peut néanmoins que je revienne un jour à ce jeu - et que j'essaie de vaincre toutes les variantes des niveaux -.               En interne la façon dont s'articule le code est une fois de plus assez étrange. Ce jeu - comme d'autres  jeux vectoriels Atari plus récents - n'utilise pas une fréquence d'images fixe. Donc, une fois de plus, j'ai dû non seulement triturer les données dvg entrantes pour obtenir une sortie aussi stable que possible sur un Vectrex, mais aussi m'assurer de les avoir saisies au bon moment. Et j'ai dû également vérifier que le jeu produisait une fréquence d'images suffisante et que les synchronisations/retards internes continuaient de fonctionner. Eh bien, j'avoue que je suis une nouvelle fois satisfait du résultat et à ce propos je dois dire que c'est bien de posséder un Vectrex pour les jeux dont on joue à l'occasion. Je n'ai jamais réussi à atteindre les niveaux invisibles, donc je ne peux qu'espérer qu'ils le sont vraiment... (si vous êtes un as à Gravitar et que vous parvenez jusque-là, merci de me le faire savoir).                                                            "}
};
ENGLISH[] = {
    { 0, 0, "Difficulty: Easy"},
    { 0, 0, "Difficulty: Hard"},
    { 0, 0, "                           Welcome to Gravitar, the colour vector arcade game by Atari.               Gravitar is regarded as a very difficult game compared to some of its Vector-based cousins released during that period in time: Space Duel, Quantum, Major Havoc and Black Widow. They are all housed in similar shaped cabinets, and share quite a bit of hardware. After its release, feedback from operators was that customers simply were not playing the game due to its perceived difficulty, the machine was not generating money for anyone. Word got around, and the sales of the cabinets dried up quickly, leaving Atari with inventory sitting in the factory. In fact such was the commercial failure of Gravitar that many were converted to Black Widows using official kits released by Atari.                I myself am also not overly fond of Gravitar (but do like it somewhat) but when I read that the original programmers also could not beat all levels of their own game I gave up playing it in earnest. Once again a game diminished by greed - or maybe just because of the economy at the end of the golden era of arcade gaming and the turmoil Atari went through at the time.                Still, I might get back to this game one day and try to beat it - all level variations - one day.               The internal coding is also once again odd. This game again - like other, later Atari vectors - does not use a fixed framerate. So once again I not only had to massage the incoming dvg data to get an output that is as stable as possible on a Vectrex but also make certain I grab it at the right time. And that the game outputs a decent framerate and the internal syncs/delays keep working. Well, I am happy with the result once again and it is nice to have on the Vectrex for the occasional game. I have never made it to the invisible levels so I can only hope that they indeed are invisible.. (if you are an ace Gravitar player and get that far do let me know, please).                                                            "}
};