How to play Solaris online
- Fly left and right: left and right arrow keys
- Dive or speed up: up arrow
- Climb or slow down: down arrow
- Fire, launch and start the game: Space bar
- Move on the Galactic Scanner: arrow keys, then Space to hyperwarp to the chosen sector
- Show the Galactic Scanner at any time: A (the Player 2 fire button)
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
The galaxy is split into 16 quadrants, each with 48 sectors. The Galactic Scanner shows one quadrant at a time, with a flashing X marking your position. It also shows Zylon fleets, Zylon planets, corridors, wormholes, star clusters and friendly Federation planets. You move to an occupied sector and press fire to hyperwarp there. During the jump you steer left and right to keep your ship in focus. Good focus saves fuel and drops you closer to the enemy. Star clusters block your path on the map, and wormholes let you jump over them.
Fuel is the resource that decides everything. You refuel and repair at Federation planets, and if the tank runs dry, your ship explodes. When the Zylons attack a Federation planet, you have 40 seconds to warp there and stop them. If the planet is destroyed, the whole quadrant turns into a Red Zone, where your joystick controls are reversed.
On Zylon planets you fly over and pick up stranded Space Cadets. Rescuing all of them destroys the planet and earns you an extra ship. Corridors are guarded passages: fly over the key to get through the ion doors. The final aim is to find Solaris itself, the only blinking planet in the galaxy. You start with three ships.
| Target or task | Points |
|---|---|
| Flagship | 500 |
| Raider | 400 |
| Kogalon star pirate, Targeter, Glider | 320 |
| Mechnoid | 300 |
| Blockader | 260 |
| Cobra ship | 80 |
| Guardian | 60 |
| Distractor | 20 |
| Rescuing all cadets on a Zylon planet | 8,000 |
| Getting through a corridor | 8,000 |
Tips
- Always focus the warp. Keeping the ship steady during hyperwarp is the easiest way to save fuel.
- Know where the nearest Federation planet is. Plan your route so you can reach one before the tank gets critical. An alarm sounds when fuel is very low.
- Answer distress calls quickly. Losing a Federation planet costs you a refuelling point and leaves you with reversed controls in that quadrant.
- Take out Distractors. They are worth little, but every hit from one drains your fuel.
- Clear Zylon planets for extra ships. Collecting every cadet is the main way to replace lost StarCruisers.
The story behind Solaris
Doug Neubauer had made Star Raiders for the Atari 8-bit computers in 1980. Solaris began as a game tied to the 1984 film The Last Starfighter, and it is not an official Star Raiders sequel, although many fans see it as its true successor. Neubauer’s cousin, comic artist Randy Emberlin, helped with the graphics. The game used a 16K bank-switched cartridge, large for the 2600, and still had only 256 bytes of RAM to work with.
Atari showed Solaris at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1986 and released it that November. Critics praised its graphics, and Retro Gamer later called it the best game on the 2600, though some reviewers found it too complicated. It was still the top-selling 2600/7800 game in the US in June 1989. It was later included in Atari Flashback and Atari 50.
Similar games to play next
- Star Raiders – the 2600 version of Neubauer’s earlier space classic
- Starmaster – Activision’s space combat game with a galaxy map and starbases
- Star Voyager – first-person space battles from Imagic
- Beamrider – a fast Activision shooter set on a grid of beams
- Zaxxon – fortress runs and space battles with fuel to manage