| Lunar Lander | |
|---|---|
 1979 arcade version ofLunar Lander, with vector graphics | |
| Genre | Space flight simulation |
| Platforms | Minicomputers,personal computers,arcade |
| First release | 1969 |
Lunar Lander is a genre ofvideo games loosely based on the 1969 landing of theApollo Lunar Module on theMoon. In Lunar Lander games, players control a spacecraft as it falls toward the surface of the Moon or otherastronomical body, using thrusters to slow the ship's descent and control its horizontal motion to reach a safe landing area. Crashing into obstacles, hitting the surface at too high a velocity, or running out of fuel all result in failure. In some games in the genre, the ship's orientation must be adjusted as well as its horizontal and vertical velocities.
The first Lunar Lander game was a text-based game published under many names, including theLunar Landing Game, written in theFOCAL programming language for theDigital Equipment Corporation (DEC)PDP-8minicomputer by Jim Storer while a high school student in the fall of 1969. Several other versions were written soon after by other programmers in FOCAL andBASIC. The originalLunar Landing Game was converted to BASIC byDavid H. Ahl, who included three versions in his 1973 book101 BASIC Computer Games. By the end of the decade, the type of game was collectively known as a "lunar lander" game.
In 1973, DEC commissioned the creation of a real-time, graphical version ofLunar Lander, which was intended to showcase the capabilities of their newDEC GT40 graphics terminals. The game, written by Jack Burness and namedMoonlander, was distributed with DEC computers and displayed at trade shows. In 1979,Atari released a vector graphicsarcade video game version of the concept asLunar Lander. It has a fuel-for-money system allowing the player to purchase more fuel to continue their current game.
Lunar Lander games were a popular concept for home computer systems. Commodore published a version calledJupiter Lander for theirVIC-20 in 1981. That same year,Electronic Games wrote that "sometimes it seems as though every company capable of copying a cassette is trying to sell a game on this theme."[1]
The original Lunar Lander game was a 1969 text-based game published under many names, including theLunar Landing Game.[2][3] It was originally written in theFOCAL programming language for theDigital Equipment Corporation (DEC)PDP-8minicomputer by Jim Storer while a student atLexington High School in the fall of 1969, and uploaded to the system library asRocket after Christmas break.[4][5][6] His computer teacher submitted the game under the nameFOCAL Lunar Landing Simulation (APOLLO) to the DEC users' newsletter, which distributed thesource code to readers under the nameApollo.[4][6] Different versions of the game were later submitted by other authors, includingApollo II andApollo 12. DEC published a book of FOCAL-8 programs in 1970 and included the game asLunar Module.[6] Other versions of the concept were written soon after: a version calledRocket was written inBASIC by Eric Peters at DEC, and another BASIC version,LEM, was written by William Labaree II, among others.[2]
The text-based games require the player to control a rocket attempting to land on theMoon by entering instructions to the rocket in a turn-based system in response to the textual summary of its current position and velocity relative to the ground.[2] In the originalLunar, players controlled only the amount of vertical thrust to apply, based on their current vertical velocity and remaining fuel, with each round representing ten seconds of travel time.Rocket added a simple text-based graphical display of the distance from the ground in each round, whileLEM added horizontal velocity and the ability to apply thrust at an angle.[4] In 1970 and 1971, DEC employee and editor of the newsletterDavid H. Ahl converted twoearly mainframe games,Lunar andHamurabi, from the FOCAL language to BASIC, partially as a demonstration of the language on the DEC PDP-8 minicomputer. Their popularity led him to start printing BASIC games in the DEC newsletter, both his own and reader submissions.[7][8]
In 1973, Ahl released the book101 BASIC Computer Games, which contained the source code of computer games written in BASIC. The games included were written by both Ahl and others and included both games original to the language and gamesported from other languages such as FOCAL.101 BASIC Computer Games was a landmark title in computer games programming and was a best-selling title with more than 10,000 copies sold. Its second edition in 1978, titledBASIC Computer Games, was the first million-selling computer book. As such, the BASIC ports of mainframe computer games included in the book were often more long-lived than their original versions or other mainframe computer games.[7] Included in the book were all three versions ofLunar Lander, under the names ROCKET (Storer version), ROCKT1 (Peters version), and ROCKT2 (Labaree version).[2] Ahl and Steve North then converted all three versions toMicrosoft BASIC and published them inCreative Computing magazine and theBest of Creative Computing collection in 1976;[8] they were reprinted in the 1978 edition ofBASIC Computer Games asLunar,LEM, andRocket as the most popular of the existing versions of the game.[2]
The first known use of the nameLunar Lander for a video game of this type was in the 1975 bookWhat to Do After You Hit Return, a collection of BASIC computer games by thePeople's Computer Company similar to Ahl's book, which included versions namedCrash andLunar Lander.[6][9] Prior to that, in 1970, the name was used for anelectro-mechanicalarcade game by Cointronics, in which the player uses a joystick to land a lunar lander model on targets, though it is unclear if the game was inspired by the video games or solely by the actual lunar lander.[6] AnotherLunar Lander video game was commercially distributed for someprogrammable calculators such as in 1975 for the Hewlett-PackardHP-25.[10] With the advent ofhome computers in 1977, the game concept soon moved to those systems as well, withMoon Lander (1977) for theMK14computer kit, which displayed the lander's speed, height, and fuel consumption on an eight-character calculator-style display, as an early example.[11] While Ahl did not list a common name for the three similar titles in his book, the style of game was collectively seen as its own subgenre, withInfoWorld referring toLEM in February 1979 as "a lunar lander" andAntic terming the set of text-based games as "Lunar Landers" in 1986.[12][13]
In 1973, DEC commissioned the creation of a real-time, graphical version ofLunar Lander, which was intended to showcase the capabilities of their newDEC GT40 graphics terminals, when connected to theirPDP-10 orPDP-11 minicomputers. The game was written by Jack Burness, a DEC consultant and former employee, and namedMoonlander; it was distributed with DEC computers and displayed at trade shows.[3][4][6] Unlike the previous turn-based, textual games,Moonlander is a real-time graphical game. The goal remains to correctly land anApollo Lunar Module on the surface of the Moon using the game'stelemetry data. If the player miscalculates the module's landing, the module will either fly off into space or crash into the Moon's surface. The game is controlled with alight pen, and the output display was avector graphics system; the light pen allowed adjusting the throttle value and the angle of the lunar lander.[3] Burness completed the game on February 25, 1973, after spending ten days developing it plus one day visiting theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, which had co-designed the actualApollo Lunar Module. There, he got the actual specifications for the lander, which he used to create the calculations of the fuel consumption for maneuvering the rocket.[4][6] Burness has said that he does not recall playing the originalLunar, but that by 1973 there were numerous versions of the game which he had played.[4] A few months prior to making the game, he attended the December 6 launch of theApollo 17 Moon landing mission, which may have inspired the creation of the game.[6]
Moonlander was the first multiple-perspective video game; when the lander gets close to the Moon, the view changes to a close-up view of the surface and lander. If the player successfully lands the spaceship, an astronaut climbs out to stand on the surface—the first depiction of a human in a video game and possibly the firstcutscene in a video game.[a][6][15]Moonlander was also the first video game to include aneaster egg; if the player flies their ship horizontally enough in the close-up view, they encounter aMcDonald's restaurant which the astronaut will visit upon landing and which the player can destroy by crashing the lander into it.[6][15] Modified versions ofMoonlander were made, with at least one renaming it to a variant of "Lunar Lander" such asRT-11 Lunar Lander, and another removing the McDonald's, as seen in a 1979 Dutch short filmMens en computer (Human and Computer).[6] A port for theiPad was released for free by Paradigm Systems in 2013.[16]
In August 1979,Atari, Inc. produced anarcade video game version of the concept asLunar Lander. It uses monochromevector graphics and allows the player to rotate the ship right or left and fire thrusters via proportional throttle control system using a joystick with a spring. LikeMoonlander, both a graphical display of a repeating mountainous surface as well as a text readout of the ship's speed, altitude, and remaining fuel are displayed. Once a game begins, it only ends when a player runs out of fuel, rather than due to a time limit; players can insert quarters to add fuel to their current game. Bonus points are awarded for landing on difficult parts of the map.[17] The game features four levels of difficulty in controlling the ship.[4]Lunar Lander was Atari's first vector graphics game.[17][18] The vector engine was inspired bySpace Wars (1978) and created by Rick Moncrief and Wendi Allen,[Note 1] who developedLunar Lander alongside Rich Moore. The idea for the game came from Allen, who had seen a graphical version of the game, likelyMoonlander, a few years prior; Atari employees had also seenMoonlander years prior at theNASAAmes Research Center and attempted to create an arcade version withraster graphics in 1975.[4][6] Another arcade game based on theLunar Lander concept from around the same time isLunar Rescue (1979) byTaito.[18]
Graphical Lunar Lander games have been produced for other systems. Although some were namedLunar Lander,[19] many were not; regardless, the name of the type of game continued to be "lunar landers".[13][20] Bill Budge developedTranquility Base for the Apple II in 1980. Commodore publishedJupiter Lander, a raster version of the game, in 1981 for theVIC-20 and 1982 for theCommodore 64.IBM releasedRocket Lander for theIBM PC in 1982.[4][21]Ahoy! magazine published aBASIC version of the game for theCommodore 64 in April 1984.[22]Tom Hudson wroteRetrofire, a more elaborate version of the lander concept forAtari 8-bit computers in 1983; it uses a 3D isometric view, so there are three velocities to control (along the X, Y, and Z axes).[23] Other games includeApollo 11 (1983) for theZX Spectrum,[24]Marslander (1983) for theAcorn Electron andBBC Micro,[25] and versions ofLunar Lander for theCommodore PET andTRS-80.[4][26]
Lunar Rescue (1988) for the Macintosh combines Lunar Lander gameplay with an economic model and trade simulation.[27] George Moromisato developedLander forWindows 3.1x in 1990,Nintendo released a version ofLunar Lander for theGame Boy that same year, andPsygnosis released a 3D, commercial version forMicrosoft Windows in 1999 titledLander. Modern versions andremakes have been made for computers, consoles such as theWii U,iOS,Android, mobile phones, and browsers.[4][26]
In the 1978 edition ofBASIC Computer Games, David Ahl described the text-based version ofLunar Lander as "by far and away the single most popular computer game" of the time.[4]Moonlander was similarly popular among users of DEC graphics terminals.[4] TheLunar Lander arcade game proved popular and commercially successful, selling approximately 4,700 cabinets. Atari'sAsteroids (1979) became so much more popular, however, that 300Asteroids games were released inLunar Lander cabinets.[4][17]
Computer Gaming World describedLunar Lander in 1982 as one of the first fun programs entry level programmers start with and continually improve upon as they improve their skills.[28] By 1973, there were numerous versions of the text-based game, and so many versions of the graphical game existed by 1981 thatElectronic Games, in a review of a version byScott Adams for Atari 8-bit computers and the TRS-80, claimed it was "yet another entry in a field as crowded as the category ofSpace Invaders imitators. Sometimes it seems as though every company capable of copying a cassette is trying to sell a game on this theme."[1][4]Moon Lander for the MK14 was one of the first three commercial games in Britain for home computers.[11] At least onemetagame exists;Antic in March 1986 publishedLunar Lander Construction Set for Atari 8-bit, in which the player constructs a custom graphical Lunar Lander.[13] InScience Fiction Video Games (2014), while discussing the games' lack of science fiction concepts like aliens or unrealistic physics, Neal Roger Tringham described the series as "one of the few video games to be based on a real space program, as opposed to the many games inspired by fictional forms of space exploration".[3]
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