Jetpac Review

Jetpac is a spaceship game that was developed by Ultimate Play The Game (Rare) and was originally released on the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore Vic-20 in 1983. It is the first game in Rare's Jetman series and is playable in Rare Replay on the Xbox One.

In Jetpac you are an astronaut who has to rebuild his ship and collect enough fuel to blast off the planet before the hostile aliens kill you. The game starts you off on a planet with the bottom of your ship on the ground and two other pieces around the screen. You'll need your rocket pack to grab the pieces and bring them to the ship to put it back together. Once the three ship pieces are together you'll need to gather fuel before your ship can blast off on your way to your next planet. While gathering the supplies needed to power your ship you'll find loot that you can also collect for points. You can also collect points by shooting the aliens with your ray gun.

After each four levels you'll get a new ship that will have to be put together before you can continue on. There are eight different kinds of aliens that will try to kill you, one type per level. Once you've faced all eight they will repeat. It's the same with the levels which I believe are sixteen, once you've played through them they will repeat forever.

Space ship 3 blasting off.

Jetpac is a fun game but will wear out it's welcome quickly. It's best played a few minutes at a time. Aside from competing for a high score once you've played all the levels the game is the same.

After the success of Jetpac Rare developed other games in the series starting with Lunar Jetpac in 1983, Solar Jetman : Hunt For The Golden Warship. In 2007 a remake of Jetpac called Jetpac Refueled was released for the Xbox Arcade. All of these are part of Rare Replay compilation.

Jetpac while fun for a little while gets repetitive so I would rate it a 5 out of 10.