Lunar Lander

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Lunar Lander
GT40 Lunar Lander.jpg
Studio Atari
Publisher Atari
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1979
genre simulation
Game mode 1 player
control Lever; 3 buttons
casing default
Arcade system CPU : 6502 (@ 1.5 MHz)
Sound CPU: -
Sound chips: discrete
monitor Vector resolution 256 × 231 (4: 3 horizontal) Color palette: 32768
information Figures for Atari arcade version, illustration from 1973

Lunar Lander is the name of various computer games . The aim of the game is to land a lunar module safely on the moon in a given target area. The player has to align the space shuttle accordingly and maneuver the vehicle through thrust and counter- thrust .

Due to the low gravity on the moon, the landing module is only accelerated slowly in free fall. Although there is a vacuum on the moon , a slight drag in the air is included in the game .

The first implementations of the game from 1969 onwards were text-based. Moonlander from 1973 implemented the game as a real-time simulation with graphical output.

Versions

1969

The 17-year-old student Jim Storer programmed a text version, Lunar Landing Game, on the PDP-8 mini-computer at his Lexington High School, Massachusetts. The relatively simple program consisted of 40 lines in the FOCAL programming language . Storer sent his program to the computer manufacturer Digital, where it was converted to BASIC by David H. Ahl and distributed via the EDU newsletter. These and other text versions were included in 101 Basic Computer Games , published by Digital Equipment in 1973 . Other similar text games are Rocket by Eric Peters (approx. 1971 for PDP-8), LEM (for Lunar Excursion Module) by William Labaree II (approx. 1971 for PDP-8) and Apollo.

1973

Moonlander, a graphical version, was developed by Jack Burness in 1973 for DEC's GT40 terminal . The game served as a demo for the new GT40 terminal, which had a light pen as input device and a monochrome vector screen for output. It took Burness ten days to implement the game in PDP-11 machine language or the machine language of the graphics processor.

The screen shows the surface of the moon and the lunar module in a two-dimensional side view. The player controls the lander in real time by touching certain areas on the right edge of the screen with the light pen that affect the rocket thrust. The graphical representation enables topographic obstacles such as mountains as a new play element.

1979

Atari produced the arcade game of the same name in 1979 . It was Atari's first vector game with the new XY technology . However, it is based on Space Wars (1977).

The game ran on a 19-inch black-and-white monitor; input was provided by a lever for the thrust and three buttons with which the direction could be controlled: left, right or cancel.

The moon is shown as a rugged, jagged line. The thrust under the lunar module can be seen.

On June 17, 1980, Lunar Lander and Asteroids were the first video games to be copyrighted .

Ports

There have been numerous ports on all common home computers, especially

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jim Storer: Lunar Landing Game Source Code Listing (last accessed September 21, 2019)
  2. ↑ Philip Chien: Blast Off. In: Compute, No. 166, July 1994, p. 90. Full text via atarimagazines.com (English, last access on August 6, 2010)
  3. ↑ Benji Edwards: Forty Years of Lunar Lander. On: technologizer.com, July 19, 2009. (last accessed on July 29, 2010)
  4. ↑ common abbreviation for the landing modules of the Apollo missions; see e.g. B. LEM in the Merriam-Webster dictionary
  5. ↑ Benji Edwards: Forty Years of Lunar Lander. On: technologizer.com, July 19, 2009, part 2. (last accessed on August 4, 2010)
  6. ^ Halcyon Days: Bill Budge.
  7. ↑ Jupiter Lander at MobyGames
  8. ↑ Lander at MobyGames