Solaris

Solaris is a 1986 space combat video game developed and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari 2600. The game involves a player seeking out the planet Solaris via their starship. To accomplish this, the player must navigate the galactic scanner to explore quadrants of a map. Doing so allows them to explore Federation planets to refuel their ship, and engage in combat with hostile aliens known as the Zylons.

The game was programmed by Doug Neubauer, who had previously made Star Raiders (1980) for the Atari 8-bit home computers for Atari and various film tie-in games for the Atari 2600 for Fox Video Games. Neubauer pitched this game to Atari in 1984, who planned to make it a tie-in to the film The Last Starfighter (1984). Following Jack Tramiel's purchase of Atari, Inc.'s assets in 1984, Atari's production of console games was halted and the game languished in development hell. Neubauer was only contacted in 1986 to complete his work on Solaris following the release of a new remodeled Atari 2600.

Contemporary and retrospective reviews of Solaris have seen critics from AllGame, Computer Entertainer and Retro Gamer praise it as having some of the best graphics for an Atari 2600 game. Reviewers in Retro Gamer called it one of the best games for the system.