Moon Patrol

Arcade 1982 Irem Shooter Driving Horizontal
The player controls a moon buggy, viewing it from the side, that travels over the moon's surface. While driving it must avoid obstacles such as craters and mines. The buggy is also attacked by UFOs from above and tanks on the ground.
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Moon Patrol

Partager Moon Patrol

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Technical

CPU
  • maincpu Z80 (@ 3 Mhz)
  • iremsound M6803 (@ 3 Mhz)
Chipset
  • Irem Audio
  • AY-3-8910A (@ 0 Mhz)
  • AY-3-8910A (@ 0 Mhz)
  • MSM5205 (@ 0 Mhz)
  • DISCRETE
Display
  • Orientation Yoko
  • Resolution 240 x 252
  • Frequency 56.737589 Hz
Controlers
  • Number of players 2
  • Number of buttons 2
  • Kind of controler joy (2 ways)

Moon Patrol Screenshots

Moon Patrol - Screen 1
Moon Patrol - Screen 2
Moon Patrol - Screen 3
Moon Patrol - Screen 4
Moon Patrol - Screen 5

Clones of Moon Patrol

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Scoring for Moon Patrol

Regular alien craft :
Destroying - 100 points

Elliptical alien craft :
Destroying - 100 points

Tri-orb alien craft :
Destroying - 200 points

Alien craft formation bonus (for destroying all alien craft in a formation) :
Formation of three - 500 points
Formation of four - 800 points
Formation of five - 1000 points
(no bonus points for a formation of two)

Small craters :
Jumping over - 50 points

Large craters :
Jumping over - 100 points

Small rocks :
Jumping over - 50 points
Destroying - 100 points

Medium rocks :
Jumping over - 80 points
Destroying - 100 points

Large (double) rocks :
Jumping over - 100 points
Half destroying - 100 points
Half destroying and jumping over - 180 points
Destroying - 200 points

Land mines :
Jumping over - 50 points

Rolling boulders :
Destroying - 50 points
Jumping over - 100 points

Tanks :
Jumping over - 100 points
Destroying - 200 points
(no points for shooting the tank's missile)

Rocket cars :
Destroying - 500/800/1000 points depending on distance
(no points for jumping over rocket cars)

Space plants :
Jumping over - 100 points
Destroying - 300/500/800 points depending on their height when destroyed + 100 points for jumping over the crater

Reaching a checkpoint in under average time :
Beginner course - 1000 point bonus
Champion course - 2000 point bonus

Reaching checkpoint 'Z'
Beginner course - 5000 points
Champion course - 10000 points

Time remaining at checkpoint - 100 points per second under average time

Tips on Moon Patrol

Enemies that appear in later stages also appear in the attract mode. If you watch the attract mode carefully, you'll learn how to deal with these adversaries.

Moon Patrol is primarily divided into 2 courses; the Beginner course and the Champion course. Each course is divided into 26 sections labelled A through Z. Each section is organized into 4 groups of 5 and 1 group of 6 at the very end. At the end of each group, your time is compared to the average time for potential bonus points.

BEGINNER COURSE

A - E

In the very first stretch, you will encounter 3 small craters, and 2 rocks. Jump over all of the craters and fire your cannon at the rocks.

Point A
By the time you drive over point A, 2 of the first alien crafts will appear overhead. They will be joined by two of the elliptical crafts. A rock will appear towards the end.

Point B
2 more crafts appear while a rock approaches your buggy. A few more rocks and a crater will follow.

Point C
3 elliptical crafts will appear. Destroy them for a 500 point bonus while you jump over the 2 craters and destroy the rock.

Point D
2 tri-orbs will introduce themselves. Be careful of the craters that their grenades might make. They are quickly followed by 2 regular crafts. One rock and one crater precedes the end.

F - J

Point E
The section begins with 2 tri-orbs followed by 2 elliptical crafts. A crater and rock appear towards the end.

Point F
More difficult obstacles appear, such as large craters, double rocks that must be fired on twice, and small rocks that must be hit by the explosion of the cannon shot.

Point G
2 craft appear while you jump over large craters and destroy a few rocks that get in your way.

Point H
There are simply 2 tri-orbs and 2 regular crafts in this section.

Point I
The first group of three tri-orbs will appear. Destroy them all for 500 points. Then a rapid succession of craters and rocks will occur, including double and small rocks. You may wish to slow down towards the end to deal with them all.

K - O

Point J
This section introduces you to land mines, the small objects that flash white and red. Like craters, they can not be destroyed and must be jumped over. They tend to occur in rapid succession, so it is recommended that you travel no faster than regular speed until you are an expert player.

Point K
More land mines in this section. When 2 land mines are approximately 2 buggy lengths apart, it is important to jump over the first one considerably early so that you don't land on the second, and have enough time to jump off the ground before you reach it.

Point L
Many of the land mines you encounter here come in pairs, but they are no more difficult to jump at regular speed than single mines.

Point M
Space craft resume their attack and this time 4 of the regular type appear to attack. Destroy them all for an 800 point bonus. This is followed by 3 elliptical crafts, worth 500 bonus points if they are all destroyed.

Point N
4 tri-orbs appear, followed by 3 elliptical crafts. If you can destroy them all, you'll net a 1300 point bonus.

P - T

Point O
A quad of tri-orbs start off this section, followed by 3 regular crafts.

Point P
This section is the first uphill climb that you encounter. Boulders of all three sizes will fall down the hill in no larger groups than pairs. Even the smallest boulders should be easy to shoot.

Point Q
4 elliptical craft appear. Be aware that their bombs don't need to travel as far in order to hit you. Also keep your eyes open for the large craters and double rock formations that show up.

Point R
As you begin to descend downhill, a pair of both regular space crafts will appear and bomb you from overhead.

Point S
3 regular crafts appear near simultaneously with 3 tri-orb craft. Stay alert to newly formed craters.

U - Z

Point T
A rapid succession of craters and double rocks appear. Take this section at the normal speed until you feel comfortable speeding up.

Point U
As soon as the craters and rock end, you will encounter your first 2 tanks. 4 more tanks are waiting for you after a large crater. Fire rapidly to overcome their bullets and destroy them.

Point V
A series of 4 large craters precedes an uphill climb, complete with rolling boulders.

Point W
4 regular craft and 3 elliptical crafts appear while you're positioned closer to the sky.

Point X
3 regular crafts are followed by 3 tri-orb crafts.

Point Y
3 more tri-orb crafts and 3 elliptical crafts fire from overhead while you must avoid a final series of craters and rocks to reach the end of the beginner course.


CHAMPION COURSE

A - E

3 regular craft and 3 elliptical craft bomb you from overhead at the start of the champion course.

Point A
Your first tangle with a rocket car will occur. It will trail behind you until it is ready to strike. Stay fast, and don't do anything until it begins to approach you. When it's half way between you and the edge of the screen, jump up and let it sail underneath you. Fire as soon as you land to destroy it.

Point B
A few tanks occur among craters and rock. The last tank in this section is positioned just after a large crater. It's difficult to destroy both the tank's bullet and the tank, so fire at the bullet and leap over the crater and the tank in one jump.

Point C
More tanks appear with short breaks of craters and rocks.

Point D
4 regular crafts fly in while you must continue to navigate over several deep craters and clear the rocks in your way. Destroy all of the crafts for 800 bonus points.

F - J

Point E
3 pairs of tri-orbs appear, providing a near constant shower of grenades. No bonus points are awarded for destroying all of the crafts because they are considered pairs.

Point F
A tricky succession of craters and rocks occur. They frequently occur back to back, requiring you to clear the rock in front of the crater before jumping, or forcing you to delay your jump so that you can destroy the rock behind the crater. Slow the buggy down if your jumps are landing too close to the next obstacle.

Point G
4 tri-orb crafts are accompanied by 4 regular crafts for a total potential bonus of 1600 points. At the very end of this section, you will be introduced to space plants. Even if you manage to destroy them, remember to jump over the craters.

Point H
3 of the regular and elliptical crafts appear among more craters and rocks.

Point I
4 tri-orb crafts arrive. Destroy them as quickly as possible before the terrain gets more difficult up ahead. Among the craters and rocks are space plants that must be dealt with. Slow the buggy down towards the end.

K - O

Point J
This section starts off with an uphill climb. Boulders now appear more frequently and groups of three are not uncommon. Do not be determined to destroy them all. Leap over a set if they prove too difficult to shoot in time.

Point K
4 regular crafts and 3 elliptical crafts stream onto the screen during your higher elevation.

Point L
Land mines begin to appear again, some in very close proximity to one another. Slow your speed down until you get the rhythm of the jumps.

Point M
More land mines appear. In this section, some land mine pairs are so close that it's actually possible to hurdle the combination at top speed, but this requires great familiarity with the mine sequence before attempting.

Point N
5 tri-orbs appear, for a unique chance at a 1000 point bonus for clearing them all. 4 regular crafts appear as well.

P - T

Point O
As soon as you begin your descent down the hill, five elliptical crafts swarm overhead with four regular crafts. Once you reach the bottom of the hill, a tricky combination of rocks and craters occurs, so clear the crafts as quickly as possible.

Point P
The craters continue to come at a relatively easy pace. A rocket car will appear while you continue to jump craters. The land will level out and eventually the rocket car will launch itself at you. Jump to avoid it, and shoot it as you land, but be ready to jump the next crater which comes up almost immediately.

Point Q
Rocks occur on either side of some craters now, some grouped in pairs. The very end of the section contains closely arranged land mines.

Point R
More rocks and craters show up, with the space plants occupying the later batch.

Point S
5 tri-orbs are accompanied by 3 elliptical crafts. A few rocks show up towards the end.

U - Z

Point T
As the section starts out, a few rocks and craters get in your way before a rocket car appears. This time, it will launch shortly after you land from a jump over a crater, so be ready to jump back up again as the car approaches.

Point U
A number of land mines appear. In the middle, two rocks must be destroyed. Use this as a cue to speed up quite a bit, because a pair of land mines roughly one buggy's width apart must be leaped over simultaneously and you need a good bit of speed.

Point V
A total of 5 tri-orb crafts and 5 regular crafts will appear to launch an attack over you. Continue to monitor forward for craters created by tri-orbs' grenades.

Point W
A rapid succession of craters, rocks, and space plants occur here. It is best to travel at normal or slower speed to ensure that you have time to destroy every obstacle in your way.

Point X
5 tri-orbs and four regular craft will dominate the sky above you.

Point Y
A full combination of tanks, craters, rocks, and space plants will assail you during the very final section of the champion course.


* Hint 1 : When alien ships fly over, keep adjusting your speed or they will eventually hit you with a bomb. Draw their bombs to one end of the screen, then shift to the other.

* Hint 2 : Although the part of the mines seems to be the more difficult, it isn't - all you have to do is not move your tank at all, only pressing the jump button. You won't get many bonus points, but at least you'll survive.

* Hint 3 : The big key to this game is memorization. After the beginner course, you go on to the champion course, which never changes no matter how many times you pass it. Memorize the two courses, and you will almost never lose a life.

Moon Patrol and M.A.M.E.

0.31 [Gary Walton]
0.11 [Nicola Salmoria, Chris Hardy]

Artwork available

TEST MODE:
- Press F2 + F3 for Test-Mode (press and release, then be patient. After the RAM/ROM tests, press 2 for an additional menu of options, then left/right to choose the option, and 1 to select it).

Bugs:
- mpatrol, mpatrolm: Screen right offset and sprites with Flip Screen on. Tafoid (ID 04938)

WIP:
- 0.147u2: hap re-added clone Moon Ranger (bootleg of Moon Patrol), it was deemed insignificant and removed in 0.37b13.
- 0.135u1: Fabio Priuli added driver data struct and save state support to M52 driver.
- 0.133u1: Improved Irem sound [Couriersud]: Better Moon Patrol sound. Revisited schematics. Corrected a bug, some discrete values and added two RC nodes from schematics.
- 29th October 2008: Mr. Do - Looks like Ad_Enuff's getting back into gear again (woohoo!). He's cleaned up three more artworks for us this time around: Another 80's Williams classic, in the form of Moon Patrol. This was borrowed from Vintage Arcade.
- 0.125u3: Added 'Coinage' dipswitch.
- 0.124u5: Couriersud added discrete mixing and filtering to IREM games using M52-sound-c boards: Moon Patrol and Traverse USA. Replaced 2nd MSM5205 sound with Discrete.
- 0.123u2: Zsolt Vasvari fixed misaligned backgrounds in Moon Patrol caused by recent changes. Stephane Humbert fixed dipswitches (especially coinage) and inputs for Moon Patrol and Tropical Angel (and their clones). Tried to "unify" the two drivers (i still think that some things can be merged).
- 0.122u8: Aaron Giles updated Moon Patrol to use resnet for colors. Fixed cpu2 rom address to $7000. Changed palettesize to 588 colors.
- 0.122u7: Moon Patrol driver cleanup [Aaron Giles]: Merged memory maps. Complete memory map. Correct video timing. Correct CPU clocks. Replaced protection hack with actual implementation. Cleaned up inputs. Fixed also graphics (score area) are shifted to 1-pixel right. Changed M6803 CPU2 clock speed to 3579545 Hz, visible area to 240x252 and VSync to 56.737589 Hz. Removed 3rd coin slot.
- 0.120u3: Curt Coder fixed missing sound in Moon Patrol, this was caused by the 6800 rewrite by him.
- 0.112: Chris Hardy fixed Moon Patrol scrolling so that it matches the schematics.
- 0.78u3: Aaron Giles fixed Moon Patrol crash.
- 5th January 2004: Curt Coder submitted fixes to the Moon Patrol driver.
- 0.78u1: Stefan Jokisch replaced the wrong character palette PROM '2a' in the Williams set with a new PROM dump and for the IREM set he changed the size of the PROM to 512 bytes, renamed all ROMs, converted the driver to the tilemap system, simplified background drawing by creating a 256x64 gfx layout and minor fixes to the video section based on schematics. Changed palettesize from 192 to 576 colors.
- 3rd January 2004: Brian Troha fixed one ROM in Moon Patrol.
- 1st January 2003: Stefan Jokisch added PROMs and converted Moon Patrol to the tilemap system.
- 0.37b13: Removed clone Moon Ranger. This bootleg was a gfx hack of Moon Patrol with no code changes.
- 0.37b6: Changed M6803 CPU2 and the 2x AY-8910 clock speeds to 894886 Hz.
- 0.35b11: Changed M6803 CPU2 clock speed to 1.5MHz.
- 0.35b10: Changed M6803 CPU2 clock speed to 6MHz.
- 0.35b4: [DOS] New -quadra and -triple video options. They are slower than the others, but provide interesting features. With -quadra the screen is quadrupled horizontally and tripled vertically, so a 256x256 game fits perfectly in a 1024x768 screen. -triple triples horizontally and doubles vertically, so it's perfect for Moon Patrol [ole00@usa.net].
- 0.34RC1: Nicola fixed music in Moon Patrol.
- 0.34b1: Added color prom ($0, 100, 120, 140 - character, background, sprite and lookup table).
- 0.33b4: In the DOS version, -vsync is supported for games running at 57fps (e.g. Moon Patrol). However, due to the sync rate being different, the game runs 6% faster than it should [Nicola Salmoria].
- 0.31: Gary Walton added Moon Patrol (Irem 1982). Renamed (mpatrol) to (mpatrolw). Known issues: Sometimes, when you kill an enemy ship which is falling down, the ship and the score will stick on the screen for some time instead of disappearing. I don't know if this is a bug of the original. The background might not be entirely accurate
- 30th March 1998: Gary Walton dumped Moon Patrol (IREM).
- 0.33b7: Changed description of clone 'Moon Ranger (bootleg Moon Patrol)' to 'Moon Ranger'.
- 0.29: Aaron Giles improved sound in Moon Patrol. Valerio Verrando added high score saving to Moon Patrol. Accurate colors in Moon Patrol [Tim Lindquist, Nicola Salmoria]. Known issues: The background might not be entirely accurate. Colors in test mode are not correct (black instead of R, G, B). The other colors in the game seem to be correct, so I don't know what's going on. Some problems with sound, which might be due to imperfect 6808 emulation. The background drum track is missing. Added sound rom (mp-snd.1a). Fixed gfx rom loading.
- 0.27: Changed description of clone 'Moon Ranger' to 'Moon Ranger (bootleg Moon Patrol)'.
- 0.15: Fixed most of the graphics problems with Moon Patrol [Nicola Salmoria]. The video driver is a gigantic kludge right now, but it works and at a reasonable speed (though I can't reach 60fps on my 486/100).
- 0.13: Began working on Moon Patrol's background [Nicola Salmoria]. It's quite messed up now. Thanks to Thomas Meyer for Moon Patrol screenshots.
- 0.12: Support for Moon Ranger (bootleg version of Moon Patrol).
- 0.11: Nicola Salmoria added Moon Patrol (Williams 1982). There is no scrolling background because I don't know where to place it... can anyone provide a screen snapshot? Game is playable with wrong colors and no sound. Control: Arrows = Move around, CTRL = Fire, ALT = Jump and F2+F3 = Test Mode (press and release, then be patient. After the RAM/ROM tests, press 2 for an additional menu of options, then left/right to choose the option, and 1 to select it). Increased the maximum size of the graphic elements that can be handled by decodegfx() from 32x32 to 64x64 [Nicola Salmoria]. Actually I would have needed 256x64 to do Moon Patrol backgrounds, but that seemed slightly overkill. Thanks to Chris Hardy for info on Moon Patrol.

LEVELS: 5

Romset: 49 kb / 16 files / 23.1 zip
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