Moon Patrol
| Moon Patrol | |
|---|---|
North American arcade flyer | |
| Developer(s) | Irem |
| Publisher(s) | Arcade
Atari, Inc. Atarisoft |
| Designer(s) | Takashi Nishiyama |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari ST, Commodore 64, IBM PC, MSX, TI-99/4A, VIC-20 |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Scrolling shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Arcade system | Irem M-52 hardware |
Moon Patrol is a 1982 horizontally scrolling shooter developed and published by Irem as an arcade video game. It was released by Williams Electronics in North America. The player controls a lunar rover which continually drives forward through a horizontally scrolling landscape while jumping over or shooting obstacles such as holes and rocks. Shooting sends one bullet forward along the buggy's path and, simultaneously, another straight up for defense against aerial attack saucers. The goal is to reach the next checkpoint and eventually the end of the course.
Designed by Takashi Nishiyama, Moon Patrol is often credited with the introduction of full parallax scrolling in side-scrolling games. Cabinet art for the Williams version was done by Larry Day. Most of the home ports were from Atari, Inc., sometimes under the Atarisoft label.