Moon Patrol

"Keep rollin' rollin' rollin'...."

Moon Patrol is a simple game for a simple time. Before the days of massive visuals, sound effects and otherwise, you had a small screen and limited detail thrown in with some action that required timing, a little bit of skill and patience. With this title, you take control of a small moon buggy and try to make it from point to point without getting yourself blown up in the process. While not the most technologically advanced game nor the most visually spectacular, its simplicity is worth noting and taking up a little bit of your time and money.

-The Game Play-

The game play that you find here is pretty simple to work with. You move from point to point while trying to avoid enemy bombers from above and rocks, pits and other various obstacles on the ground. Through your adventure, you’ll be able to shoot either above or below you in order to clear your path or throw off the bombers that are trying to take you out. For each zone that you pass, you’ll find that the challenge becomes more and more difficult with obstacles and enemies appearing more frequently to try and take you out! However, you’ll find that the patterns in which the obstacles appear seems to be constant, and if you play through the game more than once, you can memorize where everything is.

As you continue through the various zones, you’ll find that the obstacles get to the point of getting in your way constantly and without being able to turn back, you have to be on your guard almost all of the time. The way that the zones are set up is more or less to trick you into jumping in places where you shouldn’t be jumping and that can catch plenty of people who aren’t accustomed to dealing with tricky situations like that. Most of what you’re doing though can be mastered in just a few minutes of play and after you’ve been through the game the first time around, you should be able to see where and when you have to jump.

The control that you find here is pretty simple to deal with. The control stick moves your little buggy across the screen and you can either speed up or slow down by a simple pull left or right with the stick. You have a pair of buttons that allows you to either shoot or to jump depending on your means of destruction. However, you’ll have to work with the stick in the later levels in order to get the right amount of speed and then use that in respect with the jump and fire button. While not all that difficult, it does take a little practice to learn how to control your buggy in the later stages!

-The Visuals -

The visuals are pretty simple, with plenty of black, white and gray as well as some blue to give you a rounded out landscape. The backgrounds that you roll through really don’t change other than giving you some simple incline or decline in the hills and even the enemies are repeated one after another. The only real visual flare that you’re going to find is when your buggy gets blown up, because once touched with a single shot, it explodes into pieces, complete with tires bouncing and rolling away from it!

-The Audio -

From what I could tell, there really wasn’t much music that you could find with the game in order to get you through. Although this isn’t a necessity, most modern gamers will probably find that the lack of audio effects is slightly discomforting, especially when you need something to keep you in the mood. However, the sound effects do a serviceable job in keeping you up to speed with plenty of event sounds such as the shots being fired and the ever present bomb dropping out of the sky with the high-pitched whistle.

-The Verdict -

While the game keeps a steady pace by the forced movement, you’ll still find that the game really doesn’t have much else going for it with variation on the game play. The challenge isn’t anything that can’t be overcome after a few minutes of play and for most gamers who like the flare of visuals and audio, this game keeps it extremely simple. Moon Patrol isn’t a bad game, but for most who spend their time on the newer systems such as Play Station, it’ll be a little too outdated for their liking. Keeping with the formula of simple makes it better, Moon Patrol is plenty of fun as long as you’re really not looking for anything to leap out and surprise you. I’ve played this game in several different places, and although the machine seems to be getting more and more outdated by each visit, Moon Patrol is worth a visit in homage to a simpler time.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/02, Updated 10/01/02