Atari made an arcade game in the early 80s called Gravitar. Solar Jetman was obviously hugely influenced by that game. You play a space hunter who is looking for treasures on different planets, where he must deal with the different gravity elements and other factors that will challenge him in collecting these treasures. You will also have to deal with keeping your ship fueled up and battling other enemies.

It's an ambitious concept and a unique idea, but the execution is... well, it could be better. There are just a lot of parts that are beyond frustrating, where it's blatantly unfair and way too hard. Rare had a tendency during this time to crank up the difficulty to 11 (see: Battletoads), and they sure did with this one.

To make matters worse, the controls are atrocious. I get it that you are dealing with gravity and the effects of being out in space, but my goodness! Your ship just goes all over the place. And if you are heading to a pit of spikes, you have no recourse to stop yourself. It's just aggravating.

So I give this game a four for being such an original idea, a 2 for overall challenge, a 1 for controls, and 3.5 for graphics/sounds/music, for an overall score of 3. With a little more massaging, this could have been a 4 or higher, but there are too many flaws to make it higher than a 3.