Unlike many other shooting games, gravity plays a fair part in Gravitar: the ship will be pulled slowly to the deadly star in the overworld, and downward in the side-view levels.

The player has five buttons: one each to rotate the ship left or right, one to shoot, one to activate the thruster, and one for both a tractor beam and force field.

In the side-view levels, the player has to destroy red bunkers that shoot constantly, and can also use the tractor beam to pick up blue fuel tanks.

The player will lose a life if they crash into the terrain or get hit by an enemy's shot, and the game will end immediately if fuel runs out.

Escaping the reactor successfully moves the player to the next phase of planets, awards bonus points and 7500 units of fuel.

After completing the fourth universe the game starts over, but the reactor escape time will never reset back to high levels again.

The indoor scene was filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England - the arcade cabinets used would have been sourced from Atari's European factory in Ireland.

[9][10] Dan Coogan, of Phoenix, Arizona, set a Gravitar world record, scoring 8,029,450 points from December 22 to 23, 2006, playing for 23 hours and 15 minutes.

The previous world record for score was 4,722,200, which held for 24 years, set by Ray Mueller of Boulder, Colorado, on December 4, 1982, after playing for 12 hours and 21 minutes.