Solar Jetman (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Tradewest’s 1990 NES game, Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warship. I played through the primary twelve planets without using any warps. This is, in my humble opinion, one of the best-produced, most original, fun, and absurdly hard games on the NES. A friend gave it to me with a couple of other carts when we were about 9 (the game had maybe been out 6 months when I got it?), and his reason for giving this one up was that it was too hard and he never played it. His loss! This cart I swear didn’t leave my NES for months! And I never did quite beat it back then, I’d always get stuck around planet 8 or 9. If you tried to warp, it just made the game harder because you’d be so ill-equipped (in both skills and in-game upgrades!). A few years ago, though, I set out to finish it and finally did. I’ve got through it a few times since then, and it never gets old. I’m surprised to see so few attempts to play through it here on YouTube, so here’s my toast to the game’s enduring awesomeness. Solar Jetman is a different type of game - it might look like a shooter, but it really isn’t at all. It’s more about exploration and physics. It’s amazing how well-modeled the movement is in your controls here. With each planet having it’s own gravity (and then many planets have localized spots that mess with that with gravity generators and water that’ll cause you to float), the controls are extremely intuitive, as they really have to be (if you spend the considerable time needed to adjust to them) and everything reacts in a way that you can anticipate. That doesn’t mean that you won’t be running into walls a lot though. It’s far more of a spatial-reasoning, cerebral experience than it is a raw-thumbs action game, and it demands near-perfection from you toward the end. It’s also an extremely acquired taste and fairly slow moving, despite how you’ll panic every two seconds praying that you judged your speed and angle properly to not run straight into a bullet or a wall. If you’re thinking, “Eh, whatever, I’ll use a Game Genie,“ it might help you on some fronts, but you’ll still suck at it if you don’t know how to use the controls effectively. The graphics and animation are absolutely top-notch here, as they need to be with such precise movement being required. If the game had a few more colors, it could easily pass as 16-bit, and it really stands with the best for NES graphics: it easily rivals Sunsoft and Nintendo’s own best efforts. The soundtrack is equally as amazing. Each planet has its own distinct theme, and they’re all great at setting a mood and being catchy. Gold star stuff, even by David Wise standards. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the title screen or map screen tunes for as long as I live. The primary objective for each stage is to find enough gas so that your ship can take off, and doing that opens the portal to where you can find the golden starship’s part hidden on each world. There are also tons of items that you can grab for points to spend at shops on (very necessary) ship upgrades. I think the big reason for this game’s weirdly lacking popularity is the massively steep learning curve. The levels ramp up nicely, but there are few games that I’ve ever seen so many people throw their hands up after five minutes of playing saying the controls suck and it’s too hard. The controls don’t suck, they’re just unique and very specifically tailored to the experience. There’s no doubt that it is hard - as in, much more so than TMNT or Battletoads - but still, giving up after five minutes isn’t giving the game a chance. In all honesty, though, I’d put it a peg or two above Mission: Impossible for its difficulty. It can be super grueling. But it’s just so damn fun and rewarding if you can get into it. If you’re one of the aforementioned naysayers, give it a chance and a bit of time to grow on you. You might find yourself obsessing over your new favorite “hidden gem“ before you realize it. I also recently learned that this was actually the third game of a series, following Jetpac and Lunar Jetman, both released on computers. Random tidbit of info there. Oh Rare, you were 8-bit gods. Seriously. ____ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games! Visit for the latest updates!