Trackball
Action Button
Arrow Keys (forward, back, left, right)
Company: Asterisk Software
Game Title: Cyclops (or Sagittarius?)
You start out as a giant (a cyclops / centaur?) standing on the surface of Mars [or some planet] (first person OR third person view). You are big enough to walk around the equator in a hundred steps. You can move freely over the surface using the Arrow Keys and you can use the Trackball to look around you (if you crane your neck too much you develop neck strain and your gaze drops).
If you look into the daytime sky, it looks like the sky. If you look into the nighttime sky, however, you can see the stars and the planets as points of light. When a planet or moon is somewhere on your screen, a magnified ghost of the planet appears in that location.
On the surface of a planet/moon, you can press the Action Button to take out your bow and arrow, use the Trackball to aim (depending on how far your target is, you may have to pull harder and aim higher) and then press and hold the Action Button to pull back on the string and release it to fire. If you hit a planet or moon, you are pulled to it in a kind of hyper-accelerated wormhole journey and you end up in geosynchronous orbit. If you hit the ground, your shot softens the ground so you can walk there to sink down into the core. Otherwise it flies into space and turns into a comet.
From orbit, you can move (always geosynchronously) at a fixed distance from the planet/moon (so it always takes up 90% of your screen when you look right at it) using the Arrow Keys and you can look around using the Trackball. You can again use the Action button to control your bow and arrow, but in this case if you shoot down then you fall heavily to the surface. If you hit another planet or moon, you go there as in the surface case, and if you miss then you create another comet.
If a planet has rings, you can aim at them to go there, whereupon you can move along them using the Arrow Keys as if they were a flat surface and gravity were perpendicular to that surface, and you can look around using the Trackball. From the rings, you can shoot at the planet to go down, you can shoot at other planets/moons to go to them, and you can shoot into space to create comets.
From the core, you can view the surface of the planet/moon in relief from the inside (as though it were hollow except for a thin crust): mountains look like extrusions and canyons like protrusions. The surface is slightly transparent so stars and planets can be faintly seen. Your position is fixed at the core, but you can rotate yourself around in all directions using the Trackball. The Arrow Keys do nothing. You can use the Action Button here to fire at a point on the surface and thereby climb out again.
Your goal is to find three magical crystals that are somewhere in the solar system (randomized every time you play). Each one is either on the surface of a planet/moon/star, in orbit around it, or somewhere on its rings. You know approximately where each one is (near some planet, or maybe more specific hints for novices). The crystals are shaped like pyramids, brightly colored, and as large as you, so they are usually hard to miss.
Your size varies according to the object you're standing on. When on the surface, you are always of appropriate size to circumnavigate the equator in a hundred steps. When in orbit, you are always of appropriate size to view all of the planet at once.
When on gas giants, the only change is that a walking metaphor turns into a swimming metaphor.
When you find all of the crystals (you just have to see them), the game ends by showing you all of the solar system and all of the comets you've created and the paths you've taken from place to place. The simulation continues, allowing you to see all of the lines stretching and crossing as the planets and moons move around, until you hit the Action Button to exit.
Focus: scavenger hunt: locate stuff throughout the solar system.
Explore the solar system from different viewpoints (inside planets and moons, on their surfaces, in orbit, or along their rings [where appropriate]). Travel to other locations by aiming at them and being pulled there.
Solar system is always in motion. Simulation time is scaled to two solar orbits of the nearest planet per minute, so 1 year = 30 seconds at Earth and 284 years = 30 seconds at Pluto and 88 days = 30 seconds at the Sun/Mercury.