Buggy on the Moon

First of all I’d like to bring up some cool games that were also released on 1981 (same year as Donkey Kong) and that I neglected to mention on my previous post. Those are Frogger (the one where you had to cross the road with a frog), and of course the sequels to Galaxian and Pacman, which are Galaga and Ms. Pacman respectively.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s proceed with the next year in classic arcade awesomeness. I was considering which game I‘d pick up from this particular year, until I realized that I had no choice but to write about Moon Patrol, because it’s one of my all time favourites.

Okay, so you’re supposed to take the role of a police officer from the moon who -according to the Strategy Wiki- hangs out in a place called “Luna City”, which it’s the home of the “toughest thugs in the galaxy”. Really? In the whole galaxy? I’d like to hear what Darth Vader has to say about that! :)

Luckily, you have a handy moon buggy to travel over the moon’s surface and take those nasty “thugs” down. It won’t be easy tough, because you’ll encounter obstacles such as craters and landmines, and while you’re jumping over them, you’ll be attacked by UFOs from above and tanks on the ground. The good news is that, you can shoot simultaneously at the rocks in front of you and at aliens above while dodging their missiles. Keep an eye on this horde of alien scum tough, as the flying saucers create new craters when they crash.

Another remarkable arcade games that are worth mentioning and that also saw the light on 1982 were Q*bert, Pole Position and Tron. I’ll probably come back to them on later posts because they too are classics on their own right.

I strongly recommend you to start playing Moon Patrol right away if you haven’t already, as you’ll get to see the fun side of the moon! Here you have an online Moonpatrol browser version to get you started (it's not the same, but it's a start). Go and take a look at what the Moonpatrol arcade cabinet looked like if you don't remember or if you've never seen it.

Tricks and Trivia

-You have a better chance of hitting a UFO directly above if you jump while firing rapidly. This

will compress your shots, making it harder for a UFO to slip through the space between bullets.

-Moon Patrol was one of the earliest linear side-scrolling shoot'em ups and the first arcade game to feature parallax scrolling. That means that the foreground and background terrain scroll at different rates, giving the illusion of depth.