Moon Patrol
As I mentioned a few months back, my department moved into a new building in January. Among the amenities in the new building is a game room. There's a pool table, several video game consoles (the new XBox, I think) hooked up to large screen televisions, two pinball machines and two arcade cabinets of the "choose one of several dozen older games" variety. Most of those older arcade games are not very good. It's pretty clear that they licensed some old studios catalog en mass, and since many of the games from the early 1980s either aged poorly or were terrible to begin with, they aren't much fun. However, there are quite a few games that are still a lot of fun.
Chief among these is Moon Patrol, which dates from 1982. I personally remember it because there was a hotel in Grand Forks where my synagogue sometimes held large catered events like community seders, and they had Moon Patrol for many years. Of course, my memory is a bit vague on that so maybe it was somewhere else, but the point is that I played it a decent amount as a kid. I was terrible it. Moon Patrol requires a certain amount of pattern recognition, because the obstacles on the ground are virtually always identical and often require a certain combination of knowing the best way through the zone as well as deft reflexes to execute the movement. However, it also requires some ability to cope with randomness, because you are often attacked from the air by UFOs. Sometimes those UFOs can even change the pattern by blasting holes in the ground, which occasionally causes an unbeatable area. In any event, pattern recognition was important, but at one quarter a game and with quarters in short supply, I didn't usually live long enough to recognize the patterns.
Now I've got a free arcade cabinet to play with. Even better, the cabinet settings have the game set to five lives per play. Now that I can see the pattern, I can pretty consistently beat the beginners course, and I'm starting to get far into the expert course. I figure once I can beat the expert course once I can say I've beaten it. Until then, it makes an excellent fifteen minute break.
Chief among these is Moon Patrol, which dates from 1982. I personally remember it because there was a hotel in Grand Forks where my synagogue sometimes held large catered events like community seders, and they had Moon Patrol for many years. Of course, my memory is a bit vague on that so maybe it was somewhere else, but the point is that I played it a decent amount as a kid. I was terrible it. Moon Patrol requires a certain amount of pattern recognition, because the obstacles on the ground are virtually always identical and often require a certain combination of knowing the best way through the zone as well as deft reflexes to execute the movement. However, it also requires some ability to cope with randomness, because you are often attacked from the air by UFOs. Sometimes those UFOs can even change the pattern by blasting holes in the ground, which occasionally causes an unbeatable area. In any event, pattern recognition was important, but at one quarter a game and with quarters in short supply, I didn't usually live long enough to recognize the patterns.
Now I've got a free arcade cabinet to play with. Even better, the cabinet settings have the game set to five lives per play. Now that I can see the pattern, I can pretty consistently beat the beginners course, and I'm starting to get far into the expert course. I figure once I can beat the expert course once I can say I've beaten it. Until then, it makes an excellent fifteen minute break.