I have played some absolutely terrible Atari arcade games, but Gravitar takes the crap.
I will start out brief: this game sucks.
It's the arcade version of Gravitar. First off, what kind of name is that? Why not Gravitator, or something that sounds even remotely spacey and cool?
Whatever you want to call it, gravity takes a large role in the game, and will 90% the time be the death of you. You start out in a galaxy overview, as a small blue ship not unlike the one in asteroids. There are a number of planets and solar systems around you, and two ships chasing you, firing.
You can choose a number of things, from going to a galaxy, to engaging the ships in combat, or running in to the sun (which makes you go BOOM just like in space wars, the first game ever.) Which reminds me, you can see this game was HEAVILY inspired by space wars. The ships are nearly the same, gravity acts near the same way, and the fights are alike.
I'll start with what happens if you decide to take on the ships. It zooms in, and now plays like asteroids, but without any asteroids. The two ships fly around firing, and you have to get them before they get you. Being there's nothing to run into here, one tactic is to hit the accelerator and continue going off the screen, firing when they come in front of you. In fact, for inexperienced pilots this is your best chance, being how accurate the computers are.
If you reach a solar system, it will zoom in again, to a large polygon shaped planet, and you will be falling fast. There are numerous turrets on the planet you must take out. However most are in crevasses. This would be hard, except it's impossible, because of how fast you fall. You go in the crevasse, fire at the turrets, maybe take one or two out, do a dramatic turn, and try to boost back up. However, you can only boost the way you're facing, so you'd have to quickly turn up and the opposite direction of which you entered the crevasse, after shooting, and then boost, which in the timeframe, believe me, is completely impossible.
So You can't complete any levels in this game without ALOT of practice. Practice takes more tries. More tries takes more quarters. And thus, the machine does what it's supposed to- steals your money. Mission complete for Atari, screw off to you.
The best part of the game is defiantly the space battles. It's what brings this game up to a 2 instead of 1. If you accidentally drop a quarter in (as I'm sure no one would on purpose) just spend the whole time fighting off spaceships, since they respawn. Anyways, thank you for reading this review.