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Gravitar Clones and Ports (Gravitar-likes)


Clones & Ports of Atari's Gravitar 1982



This article is concerned with computer-game clones and ports of Atari's Gravitar coinop of 1982. 

Gravitar-likes are defined by me as shoot 'em ups that feature 360° rotation and firing of the craft as well as thrust, inertia and gravitational pull on multi-directionally scrolling playfields or in real-time 3D rendered environments.

The article is only concerned with Gravitar clones and ports that appeared on Western computer game machines. The clones and ports are presented chronologically.

Gravitar games are not the same as Asteroids games.

Just look at how advanced Zarch of 1987 was in comparison to Thrust of 1986 and Oids of 1987, which themselves are masterpieces.

We go from 2D "wireframe" to 3D light-sourced flat-shaded.

Gravitar Clones


Thrust BBC Micro 1986


Jeremy C. Smith's Thrust on the BBC Micro was inspired by Atari's Gravitar coinop of 1982. Thrust would spawn two other microcomputer masterpieces: Oids and Zarch.


Commodore 64 version:


Thrust Atari ST 1988


In 1988 Thrust was ported to the Atari ST by Silverbird Software from the 1986 BBC Micro original. It is notable that neither Thrust nor Oids were ported to the Amiga or IBM PC.


Zarch Acorn Archimedes 1987



Oids Atari ST 1987


FTL's Oids on the Atari ST is a masterpiece. Released in 1987 Oids did not appear on the Amiga or MS-DOS within a relevant time-frame. Thus Oids was essentially an ST-exclusive back in the day, but there was a Mac version released in 1990.

Oids is synonymous with the ST.


Oids designed and programmed by Dan Hewitt.

Oids is a masterpiece in terms of controls, presentation and playability. And it ran on an affordable 8 MHz Atari 520 ST with 512 kbytes RAM.

Oids also came out at the perfect time in the ST's life-cycle.

The argument against Oids is that Oids was incremental on Thrust (BBC Micro, 1986), which was incremental on Gravitar (Atari Inc., 1982), which was a revolution on Asteroids (Atari Inc., 1979).

However, it is important to remember that Oids came out only one year after Thrust, yet Oids is exceedingly feature-packed. Thus, Oids was instrumental in showing how 16 bit micro > 8 bit micro.

It is also ironic that one of the worst micros for scrolling hosted one of the very best scrolling shoot 'em ups. No one bought an ST for arcade-action scrollers. Overall, the ST was a technical downgrade even on the Commodore 64; the ST even had worse audio than the C64. Oids should have been developed for the C64 and/or the Amiga, not the ST.

I would even go so far as to say that the ST did not deserve Oids; it was not the right micro for Oids.

David Braben's Zarch of 1987, on the other hand, constitutes a more profound revolution due to its stunning real-time 3D rendering engine and ingenenious control system. Unlike Oids Zarch played to the strengths of Archimedes hardware. Therefore, Zarch can rightfully claim the crown without even taking into account its incalculable influence on computer-gaming.

Gravity Force Amiga 1989


Stephan Wenzler released Gravity Force for the Amiga in 1989. Gravity Force is a 50-level Gravitar-like that features two-player races, two-player dogfighting and silky-smooth scrolling and sprite-shifting.

Zeewolf Amiga 1994: High-tech Gunship Action in 3D


In 1994 Binary Asylum released Zeewolf, an Amiga-exclusive 3D shooter. Influenced by Zarch-Virus of 1987-88, Zeewolf is notable for its realistic controls (mouse or joystick) and real-time 3D rendering engine viewed from a fixed perspective. Zeewolf was programmed by Andy Wilton.


Zeewolf 2 Amiga 1995


Binary Asylum released Zeewolf 2: Wild Justice in 1995 for the Amiga. Zeewolf 2 was programmed by Nick Vincent based on Andy Wilton's original Zeewolf code.


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