The History of Moon Patrol Arcade console documentary/summary

this video was a special request by Juergen blob thank you so much for supporting me outerspace the general public has been obsessed with it ever since we landed on the moon back in 1969 growing up there was always a number of questions in regards to that big yellow circle in the sky who was the man in the moon was the moon really made of cheese what if we were able to live on the moon and drive our cars on there in 1982 we were finally able to drive our car on the moon thanks to a little game called moon Patrol what innovative feature did this game introduce that is still being used today so strap yourself in and watch out for the craters because this is the history of moon patrol the year is 1982 when Takahashi nishiyama had just started his new job at AI rim he ruined up a quick design document and handed it in to his bosses his bosses were so impressed he was put in charge of game development drawing on his fascination with outer space themes and especially the moon he set out to create the masterpiece we all know as boon patrol since this was going to be Iran's first arcade game mister Nishiyama wanted to make it visually appealing it also offers something new in terms of gameplay he came up with and implemented the very first use of parallax scrolling in an arcade game for those of you who don't know parallax scrolling is when the background graphics scroll at a different speed than the foreground graphics creating a sense of depth take a look at shadow of the beast on the Amiga 500 as a prime example of this he envisioned a side-scrolling game where not only do you have to jump over the giant moon craters but also shoot obstacles in the path moon patrol was released in 1982 it was developed by Iram of Japan and distributed by Williams here in America the game sees you piloting a moon buggy who was defending the service from the onslaught of alien invasion your vehicle has a couple of different abilities the first one is the ability to jump over craters and other obstacles the other is a forward-facing cannon which also fires up right at the same time allowing you to take out the incoming UFOs certain UFOs not only drop missiles but also bombs directly in front of you that will make a giant crater that you have to jump over on certain levels you will go up a steep incline and boulders will roll down the hill for you what you either have to jump over or shooting something else you have to avoid which is scattered all over the moon's surface are the mines one touch and it's adios for you and your car something else to mention when flying over a certain large craters plants the bottom will reach up and try to grab your buggy as it flies over the game is set across five stages with various checkpoints based on the alphabet the checkpoints not only marked the player's progress but also the restart board is your plenty is destroyed at the end of each stage you are greeted in the faster you are going through the level the more bonus points you get after you complete the initial course a championship course opens up and the game loops endlessly beyond that it's essentially a score attack with a very unusual scoring feature you are allowed to continue if you lose all of your buggies but your scores doesn't reset this means that the kids with the deepest pockets could potentially get the highest scores the game also featured fantastic music which still rattles around in my brain to this very day [Music] at the top of the screen you'll notice three indicator lights to warn you of danger when the top light flashes it means enemy saucers are flying in the middle light indicates there are minefields ahead and the bottom light being killer enemies behind you moon Patrol has the perfect blend of graphics music and play abilities there is a problem roll that suffers from the 3-minute syndrome arcade owners at the time had an unwritten rule they didn't want the player lasting longer than three minutes on a single credit so what they would do is they would either he had a boss or increase the difficulty and that's exactly what happens here the gameplay is a lot of fun but it just gets way too hard way too fast that's what she said this was not to be mister Nishiyama only Arcadia he followed this one up with another smash hit kungfu master he would later leave Iram and join capcom where he would go on to help tow develop the very first Street Fighter game a few years later he would join SNK where he created fatal fury and also worked on the art of fighting series as well as the King of Fighters finally he helped develop the Metal Slug series the game was a massive success and with it brought a ton of conversions there were also a lot of clones available but we're not looking at those only officially licensed conversions are eligible before we get started let's take a look at another classic video game commercial [Music] [Music] the first chord we are looking at is the Atari 2600 version a lot of these old conversions were done by Atari themselves under their Atari soft label upon first glance this is reminiscent of the arcade game even managed to put in the parallax scrolling background the only problem graphically I can see is that your card looks like a beetle crawling along the ground the sound effects of music are good with a dice rendition of the arcade jingle playing in the background if the sound effects of music are not to your liking you can always adjust the switches to disable the sound to make it really feel like you're on the moon or like everybody else with a brain you can just turn the volume down on the TV so how does it play considering the arcade game uses two buttons and this one only has one the game still plays fantastic [Music] next up is the Apple 2 version while the little system tries its darkness it just can't get the job done let's start by talking about the sound and music if you can call it that I think there's a version of the background music playing but it's hard for me to tell the sound effects are extremely annoying with a loud whistle every time you fired as you can see the graphics are terrible the colors are horrible and there is a lot of flicker on your money will you the speed of the gameplay is also a bit too slow but at least they implemented the parallax scrolling the Commodore vic-20 version is up next and I really wish it wasn't the graphics are large and blocky with very little animation the backgrounds are very sparse making it seem like you are in the negative zone the music is ok but the sound your buggy makes reminds me of a choo-choo train chugging along the speed of the game tends to slow down when there's a lot of action on the screen no sir I would not recommend this version the Atari 5200 version is really well done the very first thing you notice on this conversion are the excellent graphics the parallax scrolling has been replicated and looks great what doesn't look great is the actual moon buggy itself for one it only has four wheels instead of six and for two it has what looks like a giant drill sticking out of the front of it the sound effects and music are very good with the same catchy theme playing in the background despite the horrible controllers the game does play very well the Atari 800 version is almost identical to this one [Music] well I thought we scraped the bottom of the barrel with the vic-20 version but apparently not if you would love to play a game with just green and orange colors then this is the game for you since this is an early ms-dos game we are treated to some fantastic CGA for color graphics but it doesn't end there here moon buggy looks like it was drawn by a five-year-old there is also a whole lot of flicker going on the sound effects are full of bloops and bleeps and sound just atrocious there is a version of the theme song playing in the background but it's so bad I shouldn't even mention it I guess the gameplay is OK and the speed is fairly consistent with the arcade original up next is the spectrum version if you are lucky enough to play this version it will be just like you're watching the original moon landing back in 1969 and all of its black and white slow in jerky glory now I've seen him played some slow games in my day but this has got to take the cake the colors are terrible your buggy is all black and the speed of the gameplay is about negative 5% of the original arcade speed there is a primitive version of the arcade jingle but that's not saying much okay Pat man is there anything positive you can say about this game absolutely it was never officially released despite the game being completed Atari software withdrawing from the software market and this was one of the games that was left on the table it was found and released online a few years ago the Commodore 64 version looks very good the parallax scrolling is nice and smooth probably the smoothest of any of the 8-bit home conversions the sprites are large and detailed with some nice animation especially on the wheels of your moon buggy the city backdrop is missing for some reason but what's there it looks really good the sound effects are nice and the music is really good thanks to the Commodore 64 Sid chips the speed of the gameplay is just as fast as the arcade original despite only having one fire button the gameplay is top-notch up next is the MSX version instill shouts it doesn't look too bad yes there is a definite lack of color going on making everything appear as if you are at the North Pole but everything else is nicely detailed once the game starts to move you'll see the problem everything is slow and choppy the last time I saw something this choppy I was watching a Ginsu knife commercial the speed is not as bad as a spectrum version but the jittery scrolling is absolutely terrible we do get a decent rendition of the arcade theme and sound effects at least the playability sort of makes up for it the Texas Instruments version looks good although the screen is a bit cramped I don't know if this is because they put the scoring information at the bottom of the screen or what but something just feels a bit off the sprites are large but they are blocky and they don't have the greatest amount of detail we do have music and sound effects but the quality is not very good the ColecoVision port is another game that was complete but did not ship out the door due to Atari soft closing down it's a shame that's never got released back in the day because it's an excellent conversion despite a few odd design choices the Boogie itself especially the wheels are nicely animated Matthew householder who was a programmer of the cartridge did not like the look of the background so we redesigned them more to his liking there is a great rendition of the theme song as well as excellent sound effects the playability feels very good despite the fact there's only one fire button [Music] up next is the Atari ST version and it looks very close to the arcade game nice and vibrant colors along with large detailed sprites makes this one of the better Atari ST conversions the scrolling and animation are very smooth especially the backgrounds the music and sound effects are pretty good although they could have been better in my opinion playability feels good just like the arcade game [Music] even the Game Boy Color received a version of movement roll the game was released as part of a 2 pack under the Midway presents arcade hits along with Spy Hunter while the game is not arcade perfect it's very close and does a really good job of replicating the arcade machine on the Humble Game Boy Color sprites are nice and detailed and the animation is very smooth the sound effects and music are only average of best but they get the job done at long last we have separate buttons for jumping and firing so we are finally able to play it just like in the arcade speed of the gameplay is very fast and feels just like the arcade original in the year 2000 Midway released Midway's greatest arcade hits vol 2 this was a compilation of various arcade games and among them was a pixel perfect version of moon patrol the game was running under emulation so what you are getting is essentially the arcade game at home in terms of graphics sounds and playability it was released for a multitude of platforms and that wraps up the history of moon patrol the game was very innovative for its time both in terms of playability and also with graphics this is one of those games that gets its hooks in you and you always end up saying let me just try one more time honestly I think this is something that's been missing in modern games for quite some time there are plenty of good conversions available and especially the Midway greatest Arcadia series so if you ever get a chance to try this game out make sure you do you'll be glad you did if you like my videos and want to support me on patreon please click the link below also be sure to like share and subscribe to my content it's the only way my channel can grow thank you so much for watching

Channel: PatmanQC - History of arcade game documentaries

Views: 78,191

Keywords: NES, arcade, SNES, amputee, Xbox, PlayStation, Sony, Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, retro, video, gamesAtari, Colecovision, Intellivision, Jaguar, entertainment, system, Game, Boy, Genesis, Mega, drive, CD, X68000, Amstrad, spectrum, MSX, 2600, 5200, 7800, 400, 800, 1200, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, 360, one, switch, GameCube, wii, wii-u, Flash Gordon, moon, lunar, 1969, outerspace, street fighter, Takashi, capcom, SNK, IREM, midway, Williams

Id: imh9HMIbI1U

Length: 17min 40sec (1060 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020