Moon Patrol

Moon Patrol
Moon Patrol
North American arcade flyer
North American arcade flyer of Moon Patrol
Developer(s) Irem
Publisher(s) Irem
Williams Electronics
Platform(s) Arcade
Release date(s) 1982
Genre(s) Run and gun
Vehicular combat game
Mode(s) Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Cabinet Upright
Arcade system Irem M-52 hardware
Main CPU: Z80 (@ 3.072 MHz)
Sound CPU: M6803 (@ 894.886 kHz)
Sound Chips: (2x) AY8910 (@ 894.886 kHz), (2x) MSM5205 (@ 384 kHz)
Display Raster resolution 240×248 (Horizontal) Palette Colors 576

Moon Patrol (ムーンパトロール?) is a classic arcade game by Irem that was first released in 1982. It was licensed to Williams for U.S. distribution.

The player controls a moon buggy, viewing it from the side, that travels over the moon's surface. While driving it, obstacles such as craters and mines must be avoided. The buggy is also attacked by UFOs from above and tanks on the ground. Moon Patrol was one of the earliest linear side-scrolling shoot'em ups and one of the earliest arcade games to feature parallax scrolling.[1]

Contents

Gameplay

Gameplay Screenshot

The player takes the role of a Luna City police officer assigned to Sector Nine, the home of the "toughest thugs in the galaxy."

The top portion of the screen shows a timeline-style map of the current course, and three indicator lights. The top light indicates upcoming enemy aerial attacks, the middle one indicates an upcoming minefield, and the bottom one indicates enemies approaching from behind.

The map shows five different checkpoints labeled E, J, O, T and Z. Similar to racing games, the time spent during between each checkpoint is compared to the average which determines the amount of bonus points allocated to the player. The game contains two courses, the regular and champion course; after completing the first course your buggy's color changes from pink to red and the game continues on.

Ports

There have been many ports of Moon Patrol to home computers and console game systems, including:

Clones

  • A bootleg version called Moon Ranger was released in the arcades the same year.[2]
  • An open-source clone named moon-buggy for Unix-like terminals is included in most modern linux distributions.

References

  1. ^ http://www.gamesradar.com/f/gamings-most-important-evolutions/a-20101008102331322035/p-3
  2. ^ Moon Ranger - Videogame by Unknown (1982) - The International Arcade Museum and the KLOV

External links

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