Forty Years of Lunar Lander

Harry writes "2009 marks not only the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11, but also four decades of the iconic, omnipresent Lunar Lander, one of the first simulation games ever written. The first version was written by an Apollo-crazy high school student; among its countless descendants are the classic Atari arcade machine and versions for practically every other platform, from the Apple II to the iPhone. We're celebrating with a look at the game's origins, history, and significance — including an interview with creator Jim Storer, who hadn't given the game a moment's thought since he left high school, and wasn't aware of the phenomenon he spawned."

Comments

Further info on 3D lander games - shameless plug

[Lemming Mark]

Sorry for the self-promotion but at least there are no ad revenues involved ;-)

I wrote a blog entry about some 3D gravity games a while back and it's been enhanced by very useful comments from a user called "roid": http://openlander.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/history-of-3d-gravity-games/ Fans of the genre may be interested. I was thinking about wikifying an index of 3D gravity games. Yes, I wrote a lander-esque game as well, which is the main subject of the blog. It's just a tech demo at the moment, since I've got Real World Work to attend to.

My sister project, Flyin' Irons (a lander racing game set in a world of flying steam irons), is more playable as a game at the moment. The developer has had some problems getting recent Soya builds for Windows, sadly, which is holding him up.
http://flyinirons.wordpress.com/

Off topic, the guy who wrote Flyin' Irons also built the world's most advanced / powerful rubber band gun: http://disintegrator.co.uk/

Why Go To The Moon When

[Anonymous Coward]

you can go to Afghanistan?

Offtopic?

[Lemming Mark]

I seem to have ended up at -1, Offtopic, so I guess I must have upset some people. Just thought I'd link to some relevant information that I'd collected and thought might be of interest. The main blog link is about a whole genre of games that were inspired by lander-style physics, ranging throughout various styles and platforms. It happens to be on my site, which doesn't carry any adverts - I did think about posting Anonymous but I rather thought it'd be better / more reasonable to state my interest in the site up-front.

However, I see there's a +4, Insightful one liner post about how awesome the USA is for landing on the moon. If that's /on/ topic, I'm guess I'm glad to be off it ;-)

Re:Bought one, then wrote one

[sbeckstead]

Unsophisticated People LIKE fiddle music!

There fixed that for ya!