Thanks to Matthew Wilson on CSS for unearthing a surprising piece of retro rhetoric - an academic paper entitled The Many Lives of the Jetman: A Case Study in Video Game Analysis, appearing in a recent issue of Intensities, the Journal of Cult Media.
The 10,000 word article is rather heavy going (especially for non-native English speakers, I suspect) but provides an insightful treatment of the games, the remakes and the Ultimate mystique... and doesn't get too many of its facts wrong... ;-)