Tractor Beam

1992 saw the release of Tractor Beam on the Amiga systems, a Thrust variant, created by Plasma Software and released for free as a PD.

Tractor Beam is one of those games which can get really annoying quite quickly. The basic idea is to manoeuvre your droid ship from the left hand side of the screen to the right, pick up a box with your tractor beam and carry it back again. This sounds simple except for the fact that your tractor beam shows all the same properties as long strip of elastic, and so can rapidly become very difficult to control. Also, touching anything is fatal for you and the box.

You start each level floating in the left-hand pool of water, and the box starts in the right. Using the joystick you must move your droid so it is just above the box, and click fire to activate the beam. Then (very gently) drag the box back to your pool and gently set it down, clicking fire again to release the beam. Once the box has settled you need only to land in the pool next to it to progress to the next level. Each level is a variation on the above screen setup, possessing different tractor-beam characteristics, gravity levels, thruster powers etc.