Solar Quest (Vectrex Game)

Solar Quest is another of the many space shooters for the Vectrex. The Vectrex was pretty much made for these kinds of shooters. As far as space shooters on the Vectrex go, I have seen better and I have seen worse.

Solar Quest takes place on a single screen with a sun right in the middle, hence the solar part of your quest. Enemies will approach your ship from all sides and you have 4 options in how to hand them: Button 1 will warp you to another spot on the screen, button 2 will shoot a nuke that you can detonate from a distance (this is nearly impossible. I never did it successfully), button 3 will activate your thrusters and move you around the screen, and button 4 will fire your regular ammo. I found it best to maneuver with button 3 and shoot with button 4. After you shoot an enemy, an escape pod will begin drifting toward the sun. You can let them burn up in the sun, shoot them, or rescue them. You get a few points for shooting them, but even more for rescuing them.

As the game progresses, enemies will get more difficult. They'll be smaller and they'll start to zig-zag across the screen. In the higher levels you'll need precision shooting and pinpoint maneuverability in order to survive. Solar Quest provides a decent challenge and a nice twist on the Asteroids formula (yes, even with all the original twists, it's easy to see Asteroids in this game).