Lunar Lander retrospective: Moons over my Game Boy | Game Boy Works

[@mattdgroves]

Every time Jeremy says "Heiankyo Alien", Buzz Aldrin punches a moon-landing conspiracy nut

[@hikaruk.981]

I hate to admit it, but I groove whenever that Heiankyo Alien music starts playing.

[@JeremyParish]

No need to apologize for appreciating great jams.

[@devmas]

There's a Lunar Lander arcade cabinet at the Chelsea Barcade in New York City. It's a really hard, but surprisingly fun. The vector graphics are perfect for it, and it isn't anywhere near the same on the Game Boy's low res screen and digital buttons.

[@MrLeo34]

Great review - I never knew this port of Lunar Lander had that extra bit with the aliens at the end. Another game, another mention for Heiankyo Alien - please never stop.

[@jordanl-r2u]

"So, the mere novelty of typing words into a computer and having it return some kind of descriptive text was novel." ....I'm rescinding my Patreon donation, Jeremy.

[@jordanl-r2u]

Just kidding, don't worry

[@JeremyParish]

I've become history's worst monster.

[@tidq]

I learn so much about unexpectedly niche games by following this channel. I know about Computer Space, Space War, Pong, Tennis for Two, and XOXO, but Lunar Lander escaped my gaming history learning somehow. Amazing stuff.

[@KuraIthys]

I ran into the 'pack-in games' logo on Harvest moon recently. which surprised me because I don't recall that being the case... It's a game I'm quite fond of, but I'd always associated it with a different company entirely.

[@EmperorMAR]

Atari actually adapted lunar lander from a 1973 game by DEC called Moonlander which was indeed a vector graphics game (it was also the 2st game to have an Easter egg, the 1st multiscreen game, & the first game to have a graphical depiction of a human). Atari's lunar lander programmer even wanted to include moonlander's Easter egg

[@mackerelphones]

So often the most interesting games are the ones with problems.

[@2yoyoyo1Unplugged]

Oddly enough this looks like a pretty interesting game for gameboy, especially considering the source material

[@diebesgrab]

Well it’s certainly no Tennis For Two.

[@221b]

While the lunar landing vehicle had the word "Excursion" in its name during the early part of its development and thus has its acronym pronounced as "lem," that word was removed from its name (due to its associations with tourism) by the time the Apollo missions actually flew and the landers were simply known as the Lunar Module or LM.

[@openskiesmedia]

“LM”, pronounced like Stanislaw.

[@openskiesmedia]

To paraphrase one of the astronauts, “Excursion? What is this, a fucking Sunday afternoon picnic?”

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

@@openskiesmedia That wasn't one of the astronauts, that was one of the engineers who was designing the LEM.

[@chr0max]

The game "Cosmic Tunnels" from 1983 is quite similar to this. It looks like a big Inspiration.

[@l9day]

The idea that the space shuttle was used to drop off the LM for landing makes me think someone missed a history class or two. Guess that explains the digging portion of the game.

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Hey, NASA planned stuff like this. They never got anywhere close to being able to fund something like this, Reagan America didn't have enough money. Still, they probably wouldn't be using the old Apollo LEMs though...

[@jaysonl]

Being a huge space nerd, I had to land (pun intended) on the conclusion that it's better that this game has moon men in it. Mostly because it cements the game premise squarely in the realm of pure fiction, so that voice in the back of my head would finally shut up, instead of going on and on... "in reality, the Space Shuttle couldn't and was never capable of reaching lunar orbit"... "in reality, landing the lunar module was *kind of* easier to land - you could flip a switch up and down to set your descent velocity in 1ft/sec increments"... "in reality, your chance of getting walloped by a meteoroid are ridiculously small, but if it happened, it's likely you'd never even see it coming, as its speed relative to you would best be measured in tens of thousands of kilometers per hour"... But with moon men, that all just fades away, to the land of plumbers who eat shrooms, throw fireballs, and jump three times their body height, badly voice-acted vampires with a callous disregard for crystalware, and anthropomorphic ducks on pogo sticks...

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Anthropomorphic ducks on pogo sticks?

[@jaysonl]

DuckTales. Yeah, yeah, I know it's technically a cane, but it's a cane with *bounce*.

[@joppa-recoiler]

@@jaysonl what is a man?

[@TheTinker19]

Huh, the launch sequence in this game reminds me a bit of the odd NES game Space Shuttle Project, another semi-realistic attempt at emulating space travel.

[@codeman38]

I find it fascinating that this uses the standard IBM PC BIOS font, which is all too common in janky Western-developed games of this era (due to it being right there in the ROM of the development machines), but virtually unseen in Japanese ones because of NEC's dominance in the PC market there.

[@TenshiCat]

Maybe they felt it appropriate for a game where you play as an American astronaut?

[@claytonbeeney]

Ear piercing sound 10/10

[@dukejaywalker5858]

Hey, I saw you on the Night Trap: 25 Years Later Documentary! Nice work :)

[@thebigbrzezinski]

This is waaay too reminiscent of flying a ship in Space Engineers. Even the bullcrap meteors are the same.

[@cwoanthony]

bit for bit that looks like the shuttle scene from Tetris

[@davidnabbit]

Wow, I never realized the PDP Lunar Lander was a text game. I suppose it makes sense, though.

[@fingrati]

There's also a version of the game on Nintendo DS in ATARI Greatest Hits Vol.1.

[@l.marhault]

I think one of the best Lunar Lander ports was the one in Atari Classics Evolved for the PSP.

[@electrantics9489]

Really cool review, man. Thanks for posting. Hope you are doing ok

[@georgehenson2412]

Funny, I've been talking to one of the guys who made the Atari version, as well as to somebody else who worked with Larry Rosenthal who made Lunar Lander as his first vector project before Space War. I'm right in the midst of Lunar Fever! <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="220">3:40</a> Lunar Lander came out the same year as Asteroids, 1979. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="554">9:14</a> I think you meant "Spacewar".

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Nah, Computer Space is a thing. It's even older than Spacewar if I remember correctly.

[@Dilios_of_Sparta]

On a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you like Moons Over My Hammy?

[@JeremyParish]

As a name: 9/10; as food: Everything at Denny's is poison suitable only for desperate drunk people at 2 a.m./10

[@bennyfactor]

"smash that A button, fam"

[@MarkTheMorose]

Jonathan King is (in)famous for other things than 'Everyone's Gone To The Moon'... : \

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah, he's kind of the worst.

[@Wuss2ns]

So cool!!!

[@martinhernandez656]

Not available only in overseas

[@apostlenik809]

Nice

[@silpheedTandy]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="216">3:36</a> this made me laugh out loud, haha! "YOU JUST DESTROYED A 100 MEGABUCK LANDER, YOU IDIOT. MANAGEMENT IS GONNA BE SO PISSED. but here's 25 points anyways" the gameboy game looks very charming. it's so different than games where you try to kill enemies, and it even feels different than racing sims. with the music and the different stages of the game, it feels like this optimistic story about furthering humankind's cosmic reach; that thrill of scientific progress. i kinda love it.

[@beipiaosaurus]

Also ignores that you killed the people inside, including yourself. So just who is the "you" being referred to? According to The Planetary Society, the Lunar Module cost $2.4 billion (not adjusted for inflation), so quite a bit more than the $100 million in the game.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

Thanks for using that tune at the start!

[@RetroBreak]

This looks pretty fun actually! Just a shame about the random meteorites...

[@jhoughjr1]

This is impressive to me for some reason

[@TenshiCat]

This game makes me want to play Sub-Terrania!

[@ianhilmer2673]

You forgot to mention the 1973 remake “moon lander” where a McDonald’s pops up and you can but a Big Mac on the moon 😊, also the first Easter egg, predating “adventure” by several years🧐.

[@jamesmoss3424]

Lunar lander should have been released in the USA in the first place. 😀👍🎮

[@mikesimpson3207]

ngl I thought the Atari arcade game was the original.

[@TheT3rr0rMask]

Gameboy's NMS

[@yuberus]

Maybe not on Game Boy, but when you're messing with Game Boy Color you'll at least have Pong to look forward to, re: games older than you are!

[@JeremyParish]

Yep, mentioned in the episode.

[@yuberus]

Must've missed that; good times ahead.

[@JeremyParish]

Whew, I dunno. That's... a long ways away.

[@chesterfumblenutts6935]

Found a copy of the game in my collection. Is it valuable?

[@JeremyParish]

Not to my knowledge.

[@607]

I thought I would like to get this game, but so little passwords for such a lot of repetitive work... no, that's not my thing.

[@THEmuteKi]

Wow, what a weird interpretation of the game.

[@fireflocs]

Nice.