Gravitar

The player controls a small blue spacecraft in a star system with several planets to explore. If the player moves their ship into a planet, they will be taken to a side-view landscape. Unlike many other shooting games, gravity plays a fair part in Gravitar: the ship will be pulled slowly to the deadly star in the overworld, and downward in the side-view levels. Great precision is demanded of the player, as the ship rotates too slowly to allow a player to correct their mistake if they apply too much thrust and fly toward an obstacle.

The player has five buttons: one each to rotate the ship left or right, one to shoot, one to activate the thruster, and one for both a tractor beam and force field. Gravitar, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe and Space Duel all used similar 5-button controlling systems.

Gravitar was developed under the name Lunar Battle. 5,427 arcade cabinets were produced.

Gravitar inspired the 1986 computer game Thrust.

Dual-stick shooter Black Widow was offered as a conversion kit for Gravitar. The kit included a new marquee, control panel, side art, and an additional wiring harness. The kit used the original Gravitar PCB, with a few small modifications and a new set of ROM chips. Many factory-built Black Widows were produced using unsold Gravitar cabinets, and although they contain original (not Gravitar conversion) board sets, they had Black Widow side art applied over the Gravitar sideart.