Rocket Lander (1982)
(IBM PC, by IBM)
Home of the Underdogs describes this as a “a good–but very rare–conversion of the hit arcade game Lunar Lander.”
Lander (1990)
(Windows 3.x, by George Moromisato)
This is the version of Lunar Lander the author recalls most fondly. You can get it here, but it needs Windows 3.1 to run properly.
Lunar Lander (1990)
(Game Boy, by Pack-In-Video Co., Ltd.)
Only released in Japan, this Nintendo Game Boy version of Lunar Lander is a rare treat for westerners–if you can find it.
Lander (1999)
(Windows, by Psygnosis Limited)
An interesting modern 3D verision of the classic, unique because of its commercial status.
Lunar Lander (2007)
(Android, by Android Open Source Project)
Lunar Lander is a sample game for Android developers created and distributed by the makers of the Android operating system. It shows that Lunar Lander is still relevant as a demo game for beginning programmers, even today.
Jupiter Lander (2008)
(Mobile, by Eidos)
Last year, Eidos recreated the Commodore classic (mentioned above) for mobile phones.
Lunar Module 3D (2009)
(iPhone, by Jason Pastewski and Jim Covert)
The iPhone App Store hosts over ten different variations on Burness’ classic Lunar Lander game. One of the most notable is this 3D version, Lunar Module 3D.
Lunar Lander (199x-present)
(Flash, by everybody)
Lunar Lander has lived on as a favorite game to create among Flash developers. You can find literally dozens of Flash versions of the game to play online through your web browser. Here’s a good version that mimics Atari’s Lunar Lander arcade game.
Even the Science Channel has a Flash-based Lunar Lander game on its website as part of its Apollo 11 40th anniversary celebration.
Will Lunar Lander persist for another 40 years? Probably so. It has classic game mechanics that will always be timeless. But personally, I hope that we’ll be playing “Mars Lander” by then.
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49 Comments
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July 20th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Hi there and thanks for the mention! A really interesting article, I never realised the game had a life before the arcade game.
I’ve just finished a 3D Lunar Lander Flash game just in time for the 40th anniversary : http://www.sebleedelisle.com/?p=473
cheers!
Seb
July 20th, 2009 at 6:00 am
I wrote a DSL in the Scala programming language that implements a dialect of BASIC which I then used to write a textual Lunar Lander game. :)
http://blog.fogus.me/2009/03/26/baysick-a-scala-dsl-implementing-basic/
-m
July 20th, 2009 at 8:08 am
I went to work for DEC in 1976 and got to play Lunar Lander on a machine in the Mill. I always crashed.
If you landed successfully there was a McDonalds on the Moon.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:16 am
@Dave Barnes
there was a McDonalds on the Moon.
If you landed near it, an astronaut exited the LEM and visited it.
Played it at Westfield in 1976/7 and crashed, too. The tech who “owned” the system showed me the McDonalds, and helped me acquire enough scrap parts to build a VT05 to use for grad school
July 20th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I used to play the GT40 version and there was a McDonalds somewhere on the lunar surface. If you landed close enough a little guy would walk to the arches and order two big macs and a cheeseburger to go. (Not 100% sure about the order!).
R.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Hp-25 calculator had a simple version
49 programmable steps
circa 1975
http://www.hpmuseum.org/software/25moonld.htm
July 20th, 2009 at 9:09 am
I played Lunar Lander on 12/24/1967, on a GE timesharing system (ASR33 teletype, 110 baud acoustic coupler modem). I was a fourteen-year-old and thought I was going to be a chemical engineer. My dad called from the office and said that computer time that day (normally $50/hour) was free and I should come down and play some games. After a few games of Lunar Lander and a football simulator I asked him how it worked, and he said “just type LIST”. The rest, as they say, is history. That day is etched in my memory, and is the day I decided to write software for a living, which I’ve been doing ever since. [The system used Dartmouth BASIC and I recall the Lunar Lander program was only a few hundred lines of code, of which over half was text describing the game.]
July 20th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Here’s a nice implementation.
http://www.lushprojects.com/lunarlander/
It’s with some equally fine exhibits at Southwold pier
http://www.underthepier.com/06_new.htm
July 20th, 2009 at 10:04 am
@Jim: HP-25, eh? I wrote a version for the TI-59 a couple of years after that. Kept it on one of those little whizz back’n'forth memory cards.
Been quite a while since I thought of that.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:03 am
I was at Univ of Miami (FL) in 1970 when I played this game on Dr. Earl Winer’s Lab 8 computer (Industrial Engineering Dept). It was a hybrid PDP-8 and analog machine which used DEC Tape, random access tape, for bulk storage. It had a vector graphic CRT (not TV raster) display. You controlled the LEM using the toggle switches on the PDP-8 face. I believe it might have been written at MIT.
If you landed sucessfully (horizontal and vertical velocity within tolerance and on flat surface), Armstrong emerged, planted a flag, and said One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” If you found the MacDonalds (complete with golden arches), he went into the the restaurant and ordered (I think) “a Big Mac to Go”. It was the first computer game I ever played, followed by the Colossal Cave on a PDP-11 and Pong.
Very cool for the time!
Bill Marshak
July 20th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Austin Meyers has a mars lander already built into X-Plane. He also talks about the physics of flight on mars here..
http://www.x-plane.com/mars.html
July 20th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I developed a character graphics-based version for USCD Pascal in the early 80s at the University of Rochester.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Man I remember playing that game. Back then it was so cool.
July 20th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Played it on a GE TSS-8 (PDP-8 time sharing system) in 1974 at high school in Pittsfield, MA. There was a version that would report crater size if you crashed.
July 20th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I didn’t see this fine sim mentioned, if you have a windows machine you are in for a treat.
http://eaglelander3d.com/
July 20th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
What!? No mention of Gravitar!?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitar
It was kind of a Lunar Lander + Asteroids hybrid. I never could get past the first level, but I loved that game for some reason.
July 20th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Oi! Tosspots! You’ve missed out an entire generation of these games between ’82 and ’90! Have you ever heard of 8-bit Thrust? Firebird released awful versions of this for C64, ZXSpec and AMX, none of which compared to the 16 bit mastery that was Oids. A fine retrospective on the early history, but there’s a whole generation missing here…
July 20th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I wrote a Lunar Lander years ago, for the TRS-80 Model III, in BASIC. I’ve had a similar game in the back of my mind, where the player would land on other planets, and in the case of the gas and ice giants, drop a probe into the atmosphere or jettison a satellite. If you got too far into the atmosphere, you’d be crushed. I may still write it one day; maybe for the Dreamcast, as a goof.
July 21st, 2009 at 7:40 am
This prompted me to hunt for a game for IBM that I absolutely loved: “Lunar Module”. I couldn’t find it unfortunately.
You had to take off and land on a vector-based 2D moon surface, killing evil turrets that tried to shoot you down with bullets. It included a level editor, my favorite level was humongous and included some very steep drops. It had unlimited fuel and ammo so maybe it’s not a strict descendant. Must have been from around 1990.
Ah the memories…
July 21st, 2009 at 7:43 am
hey there
awesome write up
A really interesting article
keep penning more
be well
TD
http://techdivine.com/tdblog
July 21st, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I remember a fantastic Lunar Lander simulator running on Control Data 6000 series mainframes around 1970 (one of the most powerful computer systems of the time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6000_series]) at Purdue.
The operator’s console, consisting of two vector CRT displays was the interface. One display would be a view port out of the lander show a star-field and the moon; the other display was an instrument panel, all running in real time. Control was via assigned keyboard keys for fuel flow, thrusters, etc. I can’t tell you the number of hours “invested” in honing our skills of a very realistic, demanding program during non-production hours.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:39 am
My favorite adaptation for Windows is Gravity Well: http://www.plbm.com/gravwell.htm – analog thrust, classic graphics, progressively tough gravity.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I wrote a Lunar Lander graphics program for the Sharp PC1500 computer.
I used the built-in BASIC and a bit of 6502C assembler to do the graphics. At first it was just a dot going left to right. As you got closer to the landing site, you turned the thin but wide display on its side to represent landing.
All in 4K bytes…cor!
Ahh we had so much fun in the 1980s.
:-)
October 14th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I still have a TTY printout of the source code as well as an instance of playing the game from 1980.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
The late 60s origin must be wrong. I played LL on a 1957 text-only vacuum tube and paper tape computer in 1964/65 period. Game had to have been well known (even public domain) by then, did require a dedicated or non-batch (that is interactive) environment; I played it on a machine with no operating system, just a floating point interpreter (a bit like a cross between assembler and BASIC); do not recall whether LL game ran under FP interpreter or was stand-alone. Game printed out a line at a time as you descended to the moon and adjusted your burn rate – looked pretty much like the BASIC run on the Atari listing under wikipedia. My guess LL dates from 1958 or perhaps 1960. Can anyone provide an older example ?
July 2nd, 2010 at 3:36 am
What is the name of the Space Lander type game that also has Space Invader shapes attacking you? You had to land in about 3 places and also go up as well. It's such a long time ago!
July 11th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
It included a level editor, my favorite level was humongous and included some very steep drops. Feels Good.
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
You've forgotten a very very weird occurrence of that game :
In the real Sega Pinball game Apollo XIII released in 1995, inspired by the motion picture, there was, outside the fabulous 13-ball multiball mode, a moon landing video mode…
Smile!
HB
September 9th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Thanks for posting these Adrian
Here's a nice implementation.
http://www.lushprojects.com/lunarlander/
It's with some equally fine exhibits at Southwold pier
http://www.underthepier.com/06_new.htm
December 10th, 2010 at 1:21 am
That day is etched in my memory, and is the day I decided to write software for a living, which I've been doing ever sincet was kind of a Lunar Lander + Asteroids hybrid. I never could get past the first level, but I loved that game for some reason. i
March 1st, 2011 at 5:41 am
Hey, thkx, Ralph. I'm writing an academic paper about my Second Life lander simulator inspired in that version I used to play on my old HP25 and I needed that reference. You may have spared me a few hours of googling.
May 8th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
i have a taito lunar rescue. cabinet machine. 1979. like to no more about it.
May 8th, 2011 at 7:53 pm
I HAVE A TAITO 1979 LUNAR RESCUE. COCKTAIL MACHINE. I WOULD LIKE TO NO MORE ABOUT IT. I LIVE IN THE UK. MY NUMBER IS 07932836990. MY NAME IS ANDY
May 9th, 2011 at 11:13 am
i have a TAITO LUNAR RESCUE 1979 COCKTAIL MACHINE. LIKE TO NO MORE ABOUT IT. U CAN CALL ME ON 07932836990
October 23rd, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Great Article, perhaps some if you guys might like to check out the game I am developing called Lunar Flight. http://www.shovsoft.com/lunarflight