Gravitar
Gravity, but this time it shoots back.
The original
Atari took the lander's pull, added colour vectors, guns and a solar system, and produced one of the hardest cabinets they ever put on a floor. You flew into planetary wells, shot what was down there, hauled out fuel with a tractor beam, and climbed back out — all while the planet pulled at you the whole time.
How it played
Your ship had rotation, thrust, a shield and a beam. Gravity was constant and directional, and it applied while you were aiming, while you were shooting and while you were trying to leave. Nothing you did was free of it.
The tractor beam is the part that sticks. Fuel sat on the surface and had to be collected by hovering over it — which meant holding a stable position in a gravity well, close to the ground, in a ship that wanted to fall. The game's hardest moments were not the gun emplacements; they were the seconds you spent deliberately not moving.
What it left behind
Gravitar established that gravity can be a level design tool rather than a physics detail: the well is the obstacle, the terrain is the trap, and the ship's inertia is the puzzle. Its reputation for difficulty is deserved and slightly unfair — most of it comes from combining two demanding things, precision flight and combat, and asking you to do them at once.
Made by
Atari
First appeared
1982
On
Arcade
Genre
Physics / Shooter
Taken after by
The build on this site that owes it.