To the Moon! Lunar Lander is a game that was developed by Atari (one of the more famous gaming producers) in the year 1979. To sum things up about the game before we enter its real description let’s just say that Lunar Lander is a game that was designed to allow players to mimic an actual Lunar Landing module and to demonstrate how it would be to actually have to land on the moon. Seriously, the game has all sorts of features that make it realistic. For instance, it shows players when they’re burning rocket fuel and burns said fuel so that players can do turns in space and fire their thrusters in 0G’s. But that’s enough for the game overview, it’s time to go over the actual history behind Lunar Lander.
Video of Lunar Lander gameplay
Download a Lunar Lander ROM here
History
It’s funny how something amazing can come from something that people considered to be “basic”. Lunar Lander was developed from a game based on text that was simply titled “Lunar. The game was developed over the years (Lunar that is) and after a decade had roughly passed a game that went by the name of MoonLander came out of the works. Moonlander was created in the year 1973 by DEC – a company who used the then version of Lunar Lander to simply show the world what their graphics terminals could do.
Soon after Star Wars was released in 1977 Atari decided to release their own version of a Vector graphics engine which would use lines to construct graphics rather than pixels like you would see in the raster graphics engines. Once everything for the graphics engine was done (by Howard Delman, one of the employees at Atari) it was suggested that Atari create a game that would essentially test the graphics engine. Since Delman, the game designer, had a history with both Moonlander and the text-based version of Lunar Lander he thought it would make sense if he and another employee who had experience with the games work on the game,Rich Moore, actually built it. Delman would focus on developing the hardware while Moore would do the programming (or focus on it at least).
Game Structure
The game followed the basic structure of development in that the 2 of them decided to sit down and physically draw out the game’s graphics as well as it’s code (the latter they had typists actually put into a computer). They stayed together for a long period of time simply giving each other feedback on ideas. One thing that caused a bit of friction was the 2 of them figuring out the difficulty of the game (Delman wanted the game to be as realistic as possible which would’ve caused the game to be a nightmare for gameplay). After a bit of time dwelling on that topic they eventually figured out that they would have 4 difficulty levels with the last one being what they referred to as “one of the hardest difficulty spikes ever”.
Controls
The control for the game was developed using a large handle (so that players could feel that it was more realistic than it probably was) as well as a rubber padding at the bottom of the control so that players could feel that they had more control over the thrust levels. There are 10 basic levels of thrust (which Delman felt made the game that much more unrealistic). The front of the game was developed by Ed logg (another big name at Atari). After all of the planning and detail that went into the development of this game it was finally released in August of the year 1979. Cool right?
Gameplay
How are you going to make a Lunar Landing game fun with it being multiplayer? Lunar Lander is a single-player game that fits into a tiny niche or subgenre called Lunar Lander. The entire object of the game (as you could probably tell) is to land your lander or spacecraft on the moon. You do this inside of a game created in black and white with everything being seen from the side of the screen. On-screen you can see the amount of fuel you have, how fast you’re going, and the rocket ship’s altitude. In the game you have to watch out for the terrain of the moon (since it’s jagged and has very few places that you can actually land on). Let’s also not forget to mention you have control over the direction the ship goes in and that you can still control the thruster so that you can land in the area that you want to land in.
You are scored in this game based on how well you manage to land you ship (or how softly I should say) and on the level of difficulty that the landing site had. If you manage to get a good landing you are given fuel. You are able to point out the safe landing areas via bonus multiplier (flashing btw and that’s higher if the landing area is more difficult). If you just so happen to be moving too quickly and your module crashes (or if the landing area isn’t flat or is too vertical). You are able to get a better view of the landing area as you grow near the landing area. As you attempt to contol the landing module you also use up the small amount of fuel that you’re given. Regardless of whether you land the module safely you are given another round with a different landing area and your fuel. When you run out of fuel and land on the ground the game is considered to be over.
Learn what is 1942 and fun facts about it
You control the game via 2 buttons that move both right an left, the large handle we mentioned that fires the thruster based on how hard it’s being pulled, and the attached abort button.
*if you use the abort button be prepared to burn a significant amount of fuel.
Everything you do uses fuel and you lose control of the module when you run out of it. There are 4 levels of difficulty (mentioned in the history) that can be adjusted mid-game if you like. However, there is no time limit in the game, which is a good thing.
You can play Luner Lander below
Fun Facts about Lunar Lander
- There were a few ideas that were taken out of the game as it was being made. Of them these are a few of the more important ones:
- Retaining a crater where the player’s previous spaceships had crashed
- McDonald’s location easter egg like in Moonlander.
Most of the information in this article was taken from Wikipedia
Conclusion
And there you have it my friend all you need to know about the game Lunar Landing and then some. If you find any other useful information feel free to comment it below or email it to us – we’ll make sure to add it to the article if it’s useful for sure.
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