Hey, I am NOT the guy who just can't get enough of that Lunar Lander/Gravitar Thrusty game mechanic.  I get why it exists, and it is fun in short bursts, but let me fly my ship already.  So when someone tried to tell me Solar Jetman was one of his top NES games, I looked it up and realized it fit in that family.  At first, I thought "hey, they've made this fun!"  But then I got to level 2.  WHY OH WHY did you make it hard to lift things with the ship.  Maybe this is a good idea for one of the later levels after I'm already fully enjoying your game, but confronting a level right in the first hour where I'm holding thrust and going nowhere is just a bad idea.  No one likes to play a game where you can't move the character - right?  So make this easier or put it somewhere else in the game.

I finally looked it up and discovered that the object I was trying to lift (for like 2 hours while I explored the entire cavern assuming I was "missing" something) IS A BOOST that actually helps you lift things.  Thanks for kicking me when I'm down JetJerk.

I finally got out of level 2 and the gravity isn't as bad in the next level, but I've got to walk away for a while (maybe forever).

Ha! I've actually had this cart on my shelf for almost a year now, and I haven't even played it yet.

You may have just persuaded me to pop it in soon.

Played this many years ago and it's a fun game overall...but I could not beat the ending sequence. Also if you fail, it's "Game Over" and you have to do the entire last level over again, which takes quite some time (at least it did for me). I might give it a shot again some day, but I was turned off a bit because of that. Maybe I just suck and/or don't have that kind of patience anymore?

Yea solar jetman is in my top 10 list of fun and challenging games on the NES. I had it when I was a kid and used to spend hours sitting there drawing maps out of all the items and large enemies. The crystal planets are my favorite and once you get the Neptunian space pod that can go through wormholes it helps a lot! The weapon powers up are pretty sick in the game too. As was said it is not for the faint of heart, and to this day I have only ever beaten the last level once, the golden warship is so fragile!

If you do play it again, Here are some codes to save you from writing down your own.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/58763...

Yep, great game, beat it many times.

Love Solar Jetman, but the last level pisses me off. No reason it has to all of a sudden throw in a side-scrolling shmup game into the end of what was another game entirely, especially one where you get only one shot regardless of how many lives you have left. I've had to redo planet 12 so many times that I can do it in under 10 minutes now, just remember you only need the fuel cells from that planet because there's no need for any money after it.

For the pods, you will eventually get to buy more powerful pods that are capable of carrying things much better, so just hang in there.

^ Exactly, glad someone agrees with how I feel. I still love the game though...just not so much the ending sequence. Out of all of the games I purged this was one that I kept, so it means something!

Level 2 wasn't particularly "hard." It just suffered from that early game problem where you aren't sure you are even playing it right. This happened all the time with 80's games, but it was particularly frustrating on the NES because most of the games came with such a nice polish on them that you were surprised to find game elements that didn't work. They were also quite expensive compared to the experience of trading computer software back and forth, and I returned 2 or 3 games back to the store back then because the price was too high for crap like this.

If I'm holding the move button and my character doesn't move, I look around for a reason why. I don't just keep trying blindly hoping it will work (basically how I got past this part). It isn't particularly hard to succeed at something like this, you just have to either get lucky or have an unusually strong supply of patience (or the internet). Compare this to very difficult sequences where the enemies are pouring in or there is a very narrow cavern to navigate - you may never defeat the enemies but at least that is intended to be a challenge to your dexterity (not your patience).

Given everyone's excellent comments, I may take advantage of the RareReplay's save feature on this or switch to a platform that allows me to use Savestates.