Davidius

Back in College, around 1983, I played Gravitar in a never-ending fashion. I think I completed the game once. From the manual: Gravitar progresses by waves of planets (new solar systems). Successfully destroying the reactor and escaping from the red alien planet, or achieving a MISSION COMPLETE on all four regular planets places the player in the next solar system (next layer of game play). The four levels of game play are described as follows: a. Regular Gravity b. Negative Gravity c. Regular Gravity with invisible landscape and maximum difficulty d. Negative Gravity with invisible landscape and maximum difficulty After d. it goes back to a. Nothing changes. Managing the fuel through all levels is a real trick, espcially during c. & d. http://www.cooganphoto.com/gravitar/ I think I was much better at playing on the actual stand up machine compared to playing it on MAME.

I remember Gravitar well... The first time I saw Gravitar was at an arcade in downtown Toronto. I remember heading downtown to see if I could find a cheap drum-set for my brother so that he could accompany my incessant playing of Rush on my piano... when I saw the 'beast'. The guy playing Gravitar was pretty good at it, and was destroying the planets one by one. Around 1983 I was already good at 99,990'ing any Asteroid machine in town, and I was ready for more of a challenge. I decided to ask the guy playing Gravitar if he knew where I could pick up a cheap drum-set only to find myself driving to his house in northern Toronto later that night to pick up a $75 used Ludwig kit from his basement. I stuffed it into the trunk and back-seat of my parents Mercury Marquis and that was that.... But Gravitar was not forgotten, and in 1986 at Seneca College I had to defeat Gravitar... even if it cost me my studies... Damn you Gravitar!!!! I remember clearing all of the regular-gravity solar systems, reverse gravity systems... regular gravity invisible systems and reverse-gravity invisible sytems... But did it ever take time to master Gravitar. When the planets are invisible you have to be so patient and constantly shoot shots out so that you can see the outline of the planet when in narrow passages. I remember the top-ten list was changed as the top scores got higher. When I was finished with Gravitar it said 'Pontius Pilot'. Good luck beating Gravitar, as it's likely to drive you crazy first!!!

Asteroids is stilll the game. I still enjoy playing it on Chris Pile's Asteroids Emulator from 1998. It can still be found at: http://caesar.logiqx.com/html/emus/single/...asteroids.shtml I even assisted in debugging the program for Chris. And just to show the long lasting interest in Asteroids, a new Asteroids Emulator was released last week at: http://webpages.charter.net/astgl/ The game had (and still has) amazing playability and simplicity but required expert hand-eye coordination. Sometimes I'll feel like some 'skeet-shooting' and just sit on the right/left side of the screen with a couple of slow rocks moving about and pick off the little space-ships. Or sometimes I'll want to make things as difficult as possible and blast away so that the optimal amount of rocks are flying about at all speeds and see how many screens I can eliminate under that frantic pressure. At some point in the mid-80s I gravited to Gravitar for an even greater challenge, but nothing beats playing the game that was there in your early teens. The game that could prompt you to blow much of your pocket-money at arcade by the pool in Orlando Florida as young bikin-clad teenagers watched in awe. You tried your best to use just one shot. Hooked on Asteroids... hehehe.... Ain't it fun surfing e-bay and putting in a low-bid on an old cabinet and wondering what to tell the wife if you ever won!!!

The roms of [mame.dk] were removed. [mame.dk] has received a notice from a copyright holder forcing us to shut down the rom downloads.