Jetster

What is Jetster?

Jetster is a one-button flying game. Your jet moves forward on its own; press and hold to fire the rocket mounted under its belly, which pushes the jet upward, and release to let gravity take over. Walls scroll in from the right and the gap between them wanders up and down and slowly narrows, with the odd barrier floating in the middle. Touch anything and the run is over. Distance is your score.

Under the hood, Jetster's flight model is a frame-exact port of the classic Flash copter game that millions of people played in school computer labs: the same gravity, thrust, drag, 30-ticks-per-second timing and even the same quirks, verified tick by tick against the original. The art, sound and tunnel fairness tweaks are ours.

How to play Jetster

1. Click, tap or press Space to launch. Holding fires the belly thruster and the jet rises.
2. Release and the jet falls. Gravity builds up speed quickly, so short taps keep you level.
3. Fly between the wall segments. The gap drifts up and down and gets narrower the longer you survive.
4. Avoid the floating barriers in the middle of the tunnel.
5. Hitting a wall, a barrier or the floor ends the run; the top of the screen bounces you back down. The game restarts automatically after the crash.

Jetster tips and strategy

• Tap in short bursts rather than holding. The thruster is strong and the jet gains upward speed fast.
• Stay near the middle of the gap so you have time to react to the next shift.
• Watch where the walls are heading, not where they are. New segments appear on the right every tenth of a second.
• Don't touch the top or bottom in the first second and a half: the launch bay doors are still sliding past.
• The tunnel narrows from 250 to 180 pixels over about 25 seconds, then stays there. Survive the squeeze and the rhythm settles.

Why Jetster feels like the classic copter game

Every number in the flight model comes from the original: thrust subtracts 2 from the vertical speed each tick, gravity adds 1.25, drag multiplies by 0.9, the world scrolls 8 pixels per tick at 30 ticks per second, and positions snap to twentieths of a pixel the way Flash did. We reverse engineered the original's bytecode and replayed it frame by frame in an emulator to confirm the port matches to the pixel. The one deliberate change: the original's tunnel could jump faster than any player can follow, so Jetster caps how fast the gap moves.

Controls

Mouse button, touch, Space, W or the up arrow all work as the thrust button. Press H to show the collision boxes and M to mute the synthesized engine sound.

Jetster FAQ