| SOLARIS |
  Solaris is a game that started being develped in 1984 when Doug Neurembauer (?), somewhat of a sequel to "Star Raiders" from 1980. Later it almost became a tie-in to the 1984 movie "The Last Starfighter" - a movie where some kid gets a high score on an Arcade game, and hten some guy named "Centari" "Santari" or "Centuari"(see the resemblence, LOL) in what looks like a station wagon modeled after the Atari 2700 console, abducts him into some kind of space force to save the galaxy. However, when Jack Tramiel took over Atari around that time, all video game production was halted for a couple of years, and then resumed in 1986 when the 2600 was re-released, and the 7800 pro-system was finally released to compete with the NES. So this instead was released as Solaris.
In Solaris, you play as a starfighter who flies around the galaxy protecting planets from various alien invaders. It works a lot like Alan Miller's Starmaster, but minus the whole flicking console switches for menus thing. Instead the menus work on a "timeout" system, of which you fly to a part of the universe, and if there's nothing to do for too long, well, it drops you to the menu....you can also, if in a "safe" area, just press the fire button to hyperspace to another "sector". Pretty pragmatic use of the Atari 2600 joystick, I must say. As such, Solaris came out as one of the late 2600 releases that doesn't get as much appreciation as it likely deserved (another game in this list is Commando, which came out two years later in 1988). It was only ever released as a "red label" release (very late 2600 games), and was one of the larger games at 16K (32K ROM was the maximum size, and it was used for Sprintmaster - a post-apocalyptic racing game).Holy Crap, This is Atari!?!? - My Experiences I recall buying this at a thrift shop because it was said to be one of the "biggest" 2600 games. I was quite skeptical, thinking this was just to put in more graphical assets. Then I took it home and played it and was shocked to find the game actually has a lot of layers, more in common with early Nintendo releases than with a regular 2600 game. About the only signs you're on a 2600 is the lack of music and the blockier graphics, even then, the graphics are still on a whole other level from say, Combat, or even the first Pitfall game. And the gameplay is smooth, so this became a keeper really quick. Overall, it's like an expanded version of Starmaster. You start off on a planet, then take off to hyperspace, have your own radar screen to look at to select a destination, then fly there. You have refueling stations, battlefields in space, and other planets to land on and fight enemy life, save inhabitants, and avoid obstacles. And unlike Star Raiders, you don't need a second controller to play the game. It just times out and flips to the star map, or you can hit "fire" in a safe zone, and go back to the map in some cases (or the ship just takes off). Once I started getting the hang of this, I started finding out how big the entire universe in the game is, and it's surprisingly large for a 2600 game. Most of the game is just flying around blowing up aliens. Some look like Tie Fighters, some look like the Starmaster crosshair, some look like nuclear hamburgers, some look like the background of the Night Ranger logo took off and went rogue. There's also these weird metal snowflakes in some areas, or the bouncing cyclops aliens from The Simpsons: Bart Versus the Space Mutants. There's even a "fast track" stage hidden in the space port on planets marked with what looks like a late 1970's Gas Station logo thats akin to the types of things found in a Sonic Game in the 1990's. VIDEOS |
