Arcade - Moon Patrol

On of my all time favorite games is the arcade masterpiece Moon Patrol. Moon Patrol brought together good music, interactive side scrolling parallax game-play with multiple areas of focus, and driving a moon buggy. A six wheeled moon buggy with loaded guns!

There were two main areas of concern in the game. One area was the terrain, which featured craters, rocks, mines, boulders, and speeding alien ships. The other area was the skies, which featured an array of different bomb laden spacecraft. The spacecraft came in stages, with the grape looking craft launching bombs that created craters.

The player controlled the speed of the moon buggy with a two direction left/right joystick. You also could make the buggy jump, and fire its guns (which fired unlimited shots both forward and upward). The player progressed through checkpoints, from A towards the goal of the letter Z. After the first course (blue), the player then progressed to the challenge course (pink), with a repainted red moon buggy. Always a fun game to be had driving the moon buggy through alien landscapes!

Moon Patrol had an awesome soundtrack for the golden age of arcade games.