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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."
I would like to take this moment to remind everyone how fucking cool America is for landing on the moon.
It was in the early eighties, and I had a TRS-80. Bought a Moon lander game for it at a Radio Shack and it sucked donkey balls, so I wrote my own. The difference between my moon lander and radio Shack's was the same as the difference between a violin and a fiddle.
What's the difference between a violin and a fiddle?
People LIKE fiddle music!
Free Martian Whores!
As a child I kept searching for the version that let you land on the planet of those evil space invaders for an epic fight to the death - spacewar and asteroids were a poor facsimile.
bomb the us up set someone
...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.
Yeah. It's always strange when a geek escapes the darkness of the computer cave to explore the big blue room and doesn't come back. Worse, if he does come back, he'll discover that he's become stupider than before.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I grew up watching this stuff as a kid. The America we had back then is a far cry from that we have today. Gone is the self reliant take responsibility for one's self and actions. Now we have the wealth envy its not fair someone who works harder has more stuff crowd that can only relive the accomplishments of past generations because all they have nothing to show for themselves (mainly because it would require DOING SOMETHING)
when all the money is sucked up by wants there really isn't much for doing something new and exciting like the moon landings.
Yes, totally OT. But seeing the fact that forty years later and we can't do it now because of money which is better spent in the eyes of politicians on people sitting on their ass all day.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Currently on a boardwalk somewhere in England, Hack-a-Day posted this link last week: http://www.lushprojects.com/lunarlander/>http://www.lushprojects.com/lunarlander/
The main reason why you took manual control of the vehicle.... XEROX built the on board computer! And it broke... (tisk)
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
My first memory of this game was seeing the Atari version at the Exploratorium. I never knew that the original was text!
HERE ARE THE RULES THAT GOVERN YOUR SPACE VEHICLE:
(1) AFTER EACH SECOND, THE HEIGHT, VELOCITY, AND REMAINING
FUEL WILL BE REPORTED.
(2) AFTER THE REPORT, A '?' WILL BE TYPED. ENTER THE
NUMBER OF UNITS OF FUEL YOU WISH TO BURN DURING THE
NEXT SECOND. EACH UNIT OF FUEL WILL SLOW YOUR DESCENT
BY 1 FT/SEC.
Reading that, I was expecting (3) to be "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Well, a fiddle is a crude folk instrument or a medieval precursor to the voilin, and a violin is a sophisticated, nuanced instrument that the fiddle is a crude imitation of. So your version was a bit of a fiddle?
Um, no. In the U.S. a fiddle typically is a violin, especially when referring to American Folk, Bluegrass or Country music, so literally, from mcgrew's American point-of-view, the only real difference is the style of music being played (although "fiddle" players may prefer one variety of string or bow over another, the instrument that is called a "fiddle" and the instrument that is called a "violin" are typically the same thing.)
In the States, Classical music is not nearly as popular as Folk, Bluegrass or Country. Hence "fiddle" music is more popular than "violin" music, although technically these are typically the same instrument.
So what mcgrew is saying is that RadioShack's "Lunar Lander" game and his "Lunar Lander" game were very, very similar, but people liked his better for various reasons that he didn't clarify in his original post, but I'm guessing by the fiddle analogy, he means that his had better graphics/visuals and probably better controls.
Just thought I'd clear that up for you non-Americans out there who are all probably not going to get what mcgrew means.
My blog
I remember playing the line graphic version of the game on a stand up console in the arcade. It was one of my favorite games. The version I remember was a line graphic one, with the craggy outline of a landscape, and different size "flat spots" you could land on. The smaller ones gave you more points. The game was replaced, probably by Donkey Kong or Pac Man and I remember being pissed off at the time that I could no longer play it (this was Pre-Atari 2600).
/really/ PC compatible. We also had one Silicon Graphics IRIS machine. It was the hot rod of the bunch, but single user, so you had to wait your turn.
In college, I took an advanced CAD course where we wrote CAD software. There was a hodge-podge of machines there, from a Dec PDP-11 to a Harris 800. Lots of DEC Rainbow machines with the dust covers on them because they used the 80186 chip which wasn't
Anyway, we finally got an open ended assignment on the SGI machine, so I decided to write the Lunar Lander game on it - with the original as my design reference. I did a pretty good job of it too - as a mechanical engineer, I was able to use Newton's laws to accurately reflect the behavior of the LM... it obeyed Newtonian mechanics (no - it didn't take into account the weight of the fuel burned but neither did the original to my understanding).
I got all done and most of the people who looked at the rendition had not ever seen the original game. So they complained that I hadn't taken advantage of the 3d graphics the SGI machine had. It was like drawing a picture in Kindergarten and having the teacher tell me my grass was the wrong color. Only one other guy understood what I'd done - copied a real live arcade game from scratch. When they asked him what he thought, he just kept playing it and said "Awesome!"
The other funny thing was that at the end, nobody went back to look at the modeled objects... they all went back to play the game.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Doesn't everyone succumb to the lure of the Lander? Our entry in the BADGE killer demo contest was a version of Lunar Lander that ran on the Amiga Workbench... with the terrain being whatever windows you happen to have open at the time...
I can't find a screen shot or even a copy of the program on google now, and while I have a box of Amiga floppy disks at home I doubt I could find anything that would read them now. I know it was on Fred Fish's disk collection, if someone has a copy I can load into UAE I'd appreciate it.
America... FUCK YEAH!!!!
First of all, you forgot to include a link to one of these all important pictures
And secondly, there's still one of the original lunar landers existing today, and is still actually flying intact. Snoopy was the LEM used on the Apollo 10 mission, and one of two that flew to the moon, but didn't land. Snoopy was flown down to within about 7.4 miles of the lunar surface, but was not equipped for actual landing. It was then flown back up to rendezvous with the command module, and then Snoopy was released into a heliocentric orbit where it still is today. The other LEM that went to the moon but didn't land was Aquarius, the LEM from Apollo 13, which served as a space lifeboat to get the crew back home to earth.
I think I'll go have me a hamburger and a Coke for lunch now, thank you!
I'm surprised nobody has linked to it yet, but there's this guy who made a physical Lunar Lander arcade game. No flashy vector graphics here! You control an actual model of a lander using real gauges and everything.
Lunar Lander