With a heavy heart we leave Jet Set Willy and continue counting down in the the Your Sinclair Top 100 and it appears we’re in luck as what floats in at No.#31 is another Ultimate Play the Game release – this time it’s Lunar Jetman.
Lunar Jetman bobbed into view back in 1983 from Tim and Chris Stamper and was the follow-up to the rather brilliant Jetpac which arrived a few months before. Here in Lunar Jetman we find our hero “Jetman” currently lost on a strange world thanks to his botched job of building a rocket in the previous game. He discovers that this planet’s inhabitants are soon going to launch an attack upon Earth, so using just his Hyperglide Moon Rover and a few scattered weapons he alone must destroy the threat to mankind.
Lunar Jetman moved up from the tiny 16K game of Jetpac to the bulging 48K behemoth allowing for more scenery, better graphics and a few nice minor details here and there. It was certainly noticeable what the Brothers Stamper were doing with their additional 32K RAM to play with. Everything looked that bit more better.
However, with more power comes more speed and due to this Lunar Jetman becomes that bit much harder and in truth I’m not that much of a fan. I know there will be those among you screaming “Heretic!”, however coming from the simplistic Jetpac with the controls that are so easy to embrace then you arrive at Lunar Jetman. Which you’ve not only got the controls to master, but you also have the homing meteorites and holes in the ground that need filling to proceed… oh on top of that all this has to be dealt with under a time-limit too! This isn’t Kansas anymore.
Lunar Jetman is loved by a lot of people out in the retrogaming world, but I’m brave enough to say I’m not one of them. Ultimate Play the Game have made some excellent games but I truthfully don’t rate this as one of them.
Originally published July 28, 2016. Updated October 29, 2022.
