Solaris (Atari 2600)
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Image:Solaris Atari game screenshot.JPGSolaris was a game for the Atari 2600 (also supported by Atari 7800), published in 1986 by Atari.
The galaxy of "Solaris" is made up of 16 quadrants, each containing 16 sectors. In addition to space battle, the ship must descend to planets to be refueled periodically. Players are able to "warp" between the sectors, during which they must attempt to keep their ship "in focus" to lower their fuel consumption rate. Fuel must be carefully managed, as an empty tank results in loss of one of the player lives. Players could also descend to enemy occupied planets to either save friendly colonists or battle in fast paced "corridors." If players allowed a friendly planet in a quadrant to be destroyed, that quantrant would become a "red zone" where joystick controls were reversed. Enemies ranged from the easy to the frustrating - including basic fighters, aggressive "cobra" ships, pot shot-loving "pirate" ships, and base stars with accompanying swarms of fuel-sapping drones. The ultimate goal of "Solaris" was to reach the planet Solaris and rescue its colonists. Solaris is a difficult game and few have achieved this goal.
The game was programmed by Douglas Neubauer, who owns the copyright of the game and the Solaris trademark. It is far more complex than most other Atari 2600 games; the author worked at it for over one year, fine-tuning every aspect of the code and pushing the console's rather simplistic hardware to the limit. Most other 2600 games were developed in the course of merely a couple of weeks.
Solaris is considered to be a sequel to Atari's 1982 hit "Star Raiders", as both games feature an enemy race known as "Zylons", and both "Solaris" and "Star Raiders" were written by Neubauer. It is unclear if Solaris was intended to be based on "The Last Starfighter", as the Atari 8-bit version of "The Last Starfighter" was re-named "Star Raiders 2".