Early this year I decided to take on the (perhaps foolish) task of cataloging the variety of space sim games and the myriad of space adventure-RPG games (think StarFlight and Star Control 2) with the purpose of starting a blog centered on those games. Three months into it and I find that I need to step back a bit and breathe.  I need a palette cleanser. I thought I would take a look at what the NES and Famicom had to offer in the space sim/space adventure-RPG genres, but after three solid weeks of research and I decided to let it drift free.  Perhaps another week.  Instead I decided to focus on something fun, challenging, and space-themed...enter Solar Jetman: The Hunt for the Golden Warship.  It contains shield management, simulated gravity, and the ability to escape the destruction of your spacecraft as a tiny spaceman to fight another day. The game was also an important title that helped transition me from Star Voyager on the NES to StarFlight on Genesis, which I also rediscovered during my earlier mentioned research cataloging task.  Please join me while I take a retrospective look at Solar Jetman and I hope the game fairs better than Star Voyager did.



Solar Jetman is a title developed by Zippo Games for Rare and was published by Tradewest in North America and Rare in Europe. It is the third title in the Jetman series, the last in a trilogy of games released primarily on European micro-computers throughout the 1980's.  The series was another group of games developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game (Ultimate).  The first game in the series, the excellent Jetpac, is a single screen arcade-style action game where pieces of your ship, as well as fuel, randomly appears around the screen, and you must pick up these pieces and drop them off. The second, Lunar Jetman, has our hero traveling around the moon on a rover to destroy alien bases. This game mixes things up a bit, as the rover can only traverse flat surfaces, requiring Jetman to exit the rover and deploy bridge kits, as well as pick up bombs to eventually blow up the alien's base.  Both games are legendary across Europe, and at the time, spawned rave reviews across the board from computer magazines.  One would think that the teased third game, Solar Jetman, was a shoe-in as far as release.  But in the end it wasn't, and it all had to do with the new console direction of Ultimate, now known as Rare.  The game was announced for the expected microcomputer and computer platforms, but in the end, was only officially released for the NES. As the NES saw very poor sales throughout the U.K. and Europe (due in part to the extensive popularity of computers but also to Nintendo's general unpopularity in that territory), it was either largely ignored or panned (likely out of frustration as to the missing computer games).


So what is Solar Jetman?  To the those that haven't played it, the game is basically a clone of Thrust with the Jetman character and a few other twists thrown in.  To those keeping score, the Genesis title, Sub-Terraria was much in the same vein, but was set in an underground mine.  In Solar Jetman you play the previously mentioned Jetman who, since rescuing a planet in the second game, has managed to set his eyes on an amazing prize: The Golden Warship, which is scattered and hidden across thirteen planets (stages). The last piece being a secret world. The purpose of the game is to land on each planet, collect enough fuel to fill up the mother ship, find the portal to the Golden Warship piece, snap up any upgrade items and treasures that you see (or can manage to get) and leave for the next world.  Seems simple, but the gameplay mechanics gives the game its flavor and challenge. 

Each planet is subject to a different gravity field, which requires a different way to approach item acquisition and maneuvering. Your ship is subject to not only planetary gravity, but also the weight and momentum that each item adds as you tow it across the map to the mother ship. Along the way, you will encounter different kinds of enemies, from fixed-placement turrets that fire, to enemies that are able to move and fire from within the terrain. There are also gravity (pull you towards) and anti-gravity (push you away) pods that you must deal with.  Your only defense is a pod shield (the first power-up you find), which minimizes damage dealt from enemy fire and environmental damage.  The only problem is that you cannot tow items while the shield is up, which forces you to raise and drop your shields to protect yourself. A typical scenario might involve dropping your shields to try to maneuver an item, then raising your shields to break away and deal with any enemies that wander in. 

Now, take a look at the screenshot above.  See that long gauge marked, "F?"  This is your fuel gauge, and everything you do affects this gauge, including maneuvering, running your shields, and taking damage (be it enemy fire or a wall).  If you hope to get all those Golden Warship pieces (much less survive), you'll need to monitor your fuel gauge.  Taking too many hits or spending too much time exploring will necessitate a trip back to the mother ship for refueling or locating the occasional fuel drums spread out within the environment.
 
Solar Jetman is among the group of games that has really stuck in my head throughout the years due to its gravity-enhanced, item-collecting gameplay and the ability to leave the space craft and explore.  I rented and played this game extensively in my youth.  As an adult, I sought it out early when I began collecting. I haven't really played it much since then, granted, but like Simon's Quest, Clash at Demonhead, and Final Fantasy, I count it near the top as one of my best NES gaming experiences throughout my life.  But, Solar Jetman is hard....I mean really hard.  Even at the apex of my NES "skillz," I was never able to conquer it. One shot when your shields are down is enough to destroy the pod, leaving Jetman vulnerable. The one saving grace is there is no penalty for losing your ship if you manage to make it back to the mother ship alive and the ship is even replaced.  Die and you lose both a life and a pod, of which you only begin the game with four of each (you can earn more by picking up diamonds).

Ship upgrades can be bought between planets and are not too expensive, but the upgraded ships are only available for purchase in three stages, and are extremely expensive. They almost require you to either avoid purchased upgrades to your pod entirely, pick up all the treasure on each planet (very dangerous), or "grind" out against re-spawning enemies that pop up. I'm surprised that I never broke out the Game Genie for this title, but that seemed wrong somehow.  The Genie was for games that were already in the "finished bucket", and Solar Jetman was never a game I could finish, even to this day.  The built in password system helps out a lot, but that only helps getting you to the beginning of a stage.  It can't help save an hour of slow work reaping a planet of its upgrades and treasure.


And that, my friends, is Solar Jetman's biggest fault:  The game is almost too hard for its own good.  The first stage is a breeze, but when you land on the second planet the gloves come off.  Fully exploring it for treasure and upgrades took me in the neighborhood of forty-five minutes, and that is not counting getting used to the new gravity and its effect on towing items.  If you neglected to pick up the mapping unit in between stages, I hope you brought your own.  Where previously enemies slowly meandered onto the screen and casually fired, starting in stage 2, enemies swoop in, fire, and sometimes attempt to ram you.  The gravity and anti-gravity orbs also make their debut, causing havoc and often smashing you into walls and turret emplacements.  And this is only the second of thirteen planets.....  So why did I praise this game so highly in the beginning of this article?  I don't normally give much consideration to games that have such steep difficulty these days. After about eight or nine hours of gameplay during the past two weeks, I haven't even been able to progress past world six. But......I still want to keep trying.

I do wish the game was a little less on the brutal side, and that you had the ability to exit the pod at will (such as in Dinowarz, MetalMech, or Blaster Master). That would have been really cool.  But even with such a high degree of difficulty, I still want to take Solar Jetman as it is, and continue to play it. There are a lot of fun little strategies seemingly hidden in the game, such as when you realize Jetman is extremely maneuverable on his own, and in some instances is able to almost defy the gravity of the stage (and in turn exploit the occasional extra pods that are placed about).  If you haven't played it in a while, why not pick it up again, and if you've never played it before, you are in for a treat. Just don't be surprised when you find out that the "treat" has razor-sharp edges.

An interesting tidbit.....

Initially, it was reported that Solar Jetman was being actively developed for all the major computer/micro-computer platforms as well as the NES.  But for reasons mentioned above, the NES version tanked, and sadly the completed (and mostly completed) micro-computer versions were scraped. So what do you think happened to them?  Down into the bit bucket they tumbled for what seemed a good, long while.  Enter Games That Weren't 64 (GTW), a website/collective of Commodore 64 fans who seek out devs to locate those C64 games lost to time.  I won't recap the whole article, as you can read it on GTW's site, but suffice to say one of the developers managed to find the old disks, ship them to GTW, and BANG!, it's up for the world to play.  And you know what?  The game is awesome, and would have likely sold gangbusters where the NES version didn't (read: Europe).  Too bad, but in the end at least we get to play the game, eh?

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