"Drops of Jupiter in her hair..."

The next time you're outside, take a look up into the sky. Beyond that never-ending stretch of blue, countless stars, planets and other phenomena are floating aimlessly through the cosmos. We think of planet Earth as one of the largest, most awe-inspiring objects ever seen, yet it nothing more than a tiny blue dot in the grand scheme of the Universe. The world that we all know and love is nothing more than a just another ball of mass orbiting around a sun somewhere in one of countless galaxies. Space presents us with an opportunity of seemingly limitless potential, yet we have barely managed to scratch the surface of even the closest planets to our own. As of this moment, our technology is still not advanced enough for deep space exploration, let alone an extended amount of time away from our world. However, such limitations can't stop us from dreaming of what the future may hold.

Skip ahead a few centuries, and science has finally gotten advanced enough to allow for not only exploration, but regular commerce as well. Those in the mining business have ditched their Earth-bound mines in favor of some untapped sources on the moons of Jupiter. However, this interstellar resource enterprise is about to deal with something far more dangerous than a typical cave-in. Apparently, the aliens living in the area don't like having strange Earth people digging up their homeland. Armed with some massive ships and deadly laser beams, they've begun a crusade against humanity, opting to wipe out the miners they despise so much. As the captain of the USS Moonsweeper, it's your sworn duty to protect those miners at all costs. Your mission will lead you deep into the middle of the hostile territory, where you'll have to put your best piloting skills to the test to win the day. With little time remaining, it's up to you to save countless lives from the alien siege.

You'll zoom straight into the heart of the conflict, stopping just shy of melting into the sun. Unlike the calm, silent setting that so many science fiction movies try to portray, the cosmos in Moonsweeper is lively and filled to the brim with danger. You'll be immediately bombarded with glowing meteorites, deadly comets and some blazing hot solar flares. You'll have to dodge all of these intergalactic projectiles, lest you want to get your ship smashed and burned into scrap metal. Thankfully, your ship is both quick and responsive, leaving little chance of you getting decimated by these poorly programmed hazards. You'll end up floating back and forth across the bottom of the screen, leisurely avoid any harm that may come your way. Every so often, a large colored moon will zoom into the area. Should you be close enough to its orbit, you'll be sucked into the moon's gravitational pull and sent down to the surface for the bulk of your massive rescue mission.

Once you've gotten low enough to skim the moon's landscape, you'll have to become accustomed to the new surroundings. You'll be blazing across a wide expanse of land, looking for any miners inhabiting the area. Luckily, there's a small yellow indicator on the screen that will point you in the direction of the nearest miner and automatically change once you've made a successful pickup. However, things won't be quite as simple as first seems. The land is littered with towers, blocking your flight path and risking a collision. Also, alien ships will descend upon your location and unleash a few warships to annihilate you. Also, the aliens can vaporize the miners, leaving nothing but bloody destruction in their wake. You'll be equipped with a missile launcher, but the badly constructed control scheme will either make you miss your targets completely and probably end up hitting the person you were trying to save. You've got maneuver and aim carefully to handle everything happening on the battlefield. Once you've saved enough people, it'll be off back into space to begin the process anew.

Considering that you'll be visiting countless moons along your rescue mission, you'd probably expect to find some strange and wonderful visuals with your otherworldly experience. Granted, the sun looks like a big ball of yellow fire, but that's the extent of the gorgeous scenery in outer space. Everything in the game, from the flashing meteorites to the solar flares to the ship itself is rendered with basic pixels drawn with a small variety of colors. At least your ship stands out with a bright orange, red, and purple paint job. The lunar surfaces are much more lively, what with the bright neon landscape and the multitude of alien ships attempting to gun you down. You'll get to shoot down a decent variety of enemies, ranging among big yellow blobs, flying saucers, and mini-fighter planes. Unfortunately, the majority of the other objects aren't detailed very well; you could easily mistake a tower barricade for a helpless miner, or accidentally murder your targets instead of the enemy spaceships. While this presentation is above average for the usual Atari 2600 game standards, the lacking graphics may trip you up during the first few playthroughs.

Rescue missions are among the most annoying aspects of many games of this generation. They tend to be tedious, drawn out, and unnecessarily aggravating. How many damsels in distress need rescuing? How many times must we save the lives of our companions? How helpless and utterly useless can an NPC before the line between fun and boredom is crossed? However, Moonsweeper takes the concept of the rescue mission and gives it to us straight; you fly down to a moon, pick up a bunch of characters that need saving, and hope you don't get blown to smithereens in the process. Combined with a simplistic vertical shooter system, this game makes for a wonderful (albeit not very difficult) test for your gaming prowess. It may be centuries before mankind has to deal with this kind of situation in reality, but at least this game allows to dream of a future among the stars.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/06