Moon Patrol Walkthrough

Moon Patrol is an arcade game developed and published by Irem. The North American distribution was licensed to Williams Electronics. It was released in 1982. Moon Patrol goes down in history as one of the first side-scrolling shoot-em-ups and one of the first arcade games to feature parallax scrolling, where background images move slower than foreground images, creating the illusion of depth on a 2D surface. This Flash version of Moon Patrol captures some of the feel of the classic game, but is not a perfect port.

The objective of Moon Patrol is to arrive at your destination safely. You will have to jump over craters and other obstacles as well as destroy enemies to reach your goal. If you run into an obstacle, you will lose one life. When all lives are lost, the game is over.

This Flash version of Moon Patrol uses a simple keyboard control scheme. Move your tank left and right by using the left and right arrow keys. The up arrow key is used to jump. Finally, you can shoot when you are not jumping by using the spacebar. Unlike the original version of this classic game, you shoot one bullet forward and one at an angle that travels upward and forward rather than straight upwards.

Aside from the direction of the upward shot, this Flash version of Moon Patrol has other key differences compared to the classic game. Firstly, the graphics and sounds do not emulate those of the original arcade game. Secondly, there are no checkpoints in this Flash game. Finally, there are no indicators at the top of the screen to mark your progress or warn you of aerial attacks.

If you enjoyed the original Moon Patrol and cannot be bothered to download an emulator and a ROM of the original, then this Flash version of the classic game may appeal to you. If you need a picture-perfect port, however, then you may be disappointed.