Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Man landed on the moon for the first time on July 20, 1969. Three American astronauts arrived in lunar orbit on the Apollo 11 spacecraft, and two of them piloted the Eagle lunar module and landed on the lunar surface.

The first astronaut to set foot on the moon was commander Neil Armstrong. When he came out of the cabin, he said a sentence that was later regarded as a classic: "this is a small step for a man and a big step for mankind."

The second astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, also left a brief impression while enjoying the lunar landscape: "magnificent desolation" (Magnificent desolation).

▲ is on the moon. Armstrong took a picture of Aldrin.

The US moon landing program was originally part of the space race during the Cold War, but it greatly aroused the enthusiasm of the public for space exploration and inspired the literary and art circles. Science fiction works such as "2001: a Space Odyssey" and "Planet of the Apes" were born in the "space fever" period of the 1960s and achieved unprecedented success.

At the same time, video games also benefited a lot from the space race and the moon landing program. In fact, just four months after Armstrong took a big step, Americans can already feel the "magnificent desolation" in the Moon Simulator game. Although there is a huge gap between the "game" here and the game in the public perception of the 21st century, it also carries a beautiful fantasy about space.

Since then, this simple way of manipulating the spacecraft to land on the moon has undergone half a century of changes, and some players still enjoy it.

▲ uses the Win10 system to copy and paste the progress bar adapted to the moon landing game

About 650 million viewers around the world watched Armstrong take his first step on the moon live on television, including 17-year-old American high school student Jim Storer.

Lunar module on ▲ TV

Since then, Jim has come up with the idea of writing a moon landing simulation program. It just so happens that his Lexington high school offers a computer course and buys a PDP-8 "mini computer" made by DEC (a digital equipment company).

Although it is called a "mini", the actual size of the PDP-8 is still about the same as a small household refrigerator. The PDP-8 sold for $18500 in 1965 (equivalent to $160000 in 2021), the first computer to dare to sell for less than $20, 000, and the best-selling computer in history at the time.

▲ PDP-8 uses transistor circuit boards for operations and runs memory 12KB

In November 1969, Apollo 12 completed its second moon landing, and Jim's fall semester ended. By this time, Jim had learned PDP-8 's unique programming language, FOCAL, and wrote less than 50 lines of code, turning his inspiration into reality.

As a result, the first moon landing simulator was born. Technical limitations determine that the game can only present the content of the game in words, with no screen and no sound. However, the power of words should not be underestimated. With just a few words, Jim created a sense of immersion for the game.

The computer that controls the landing of the lunar module is broken, and the astronaut played by the player must manually control the fuel consumption of the thruster and slow down the spacecraft in order to land safely. Every 10 seconds, a line of reports is displayed on the screen, counting the ship's altitude, landing speed, and the total amount of fuel remaining. The report ends with a question mark that asks players to enter a number between 0 and 200 to determine fuel consumption over the next 10 seconds.

The lunar module needs to touch the surface of the moon at a very low speed before the game will prompt a "perfect landing". If the speed is too fast, the lunar module will crash and explode, and the game will deliberately satirize the player: "you blew up a new crater xx feet deep on the moon!"

At the end of that year, Jim's masterpiece was uploaded to the school's system database. The teacher in charge of the computer course tried to submit the game to DEC and gave the game its first name: the FOCAL Moon Simulator (Apollo).

In 1970, DEC's educational marketing manager and newsletter editor David Al (David H.Ahl) translated Jim's game into the BASIC programming language and distributed the source code to educational institutions through DEC's print publication. Since then, Jim's game has been copied by programmers all over the United States, and copies have emerged one after another: "Apollo 2", "Apollo 12", "Rockets", "LEM (lunar module)".

Not all of these pirated games are complete plagiarism. Rocket, for example, uses text to create a simple graphical interface to show the height of the lunar module, while LEM increases horizontal speed for the first time, making the game more difficult.

Screenshot of ▲ Rocket Game

In 1973, DEC published a programming book compiled by David called 101computer games written in BASIC, including Jim's original moon landing game and two Jim-inspired copies of Rocket and LEM.

In 1978, the second edition of BASIC computer Games was released, becoming the first computer book ever to sell more than 1 million copies, leaving solid evidence for Jim's status as the father of moon landings. In his book, David writes that Jim's game is "by far the most popular single computer game".

Jim's name was left in the ▲ book.

Jim himself doesn't care about these titles. Jim's valuable programming experience in computer classes did affect Jim's career, and now he is a professor of computer science at Brandeis University. But for a long time after graduating from high school, Jim forgot about the moon landing game, let alone that his game had been copied by his peers.

One day in December 1972, DEC part-time consultant Jack Burness (Jack Burness) pestered a local senator to ask for a pass to the Apollo 17 launch site. Apollo 17 is the last mission of the American Apollo program and the last mission for man to land on the moon so far.

Jack is a big fan of the American moon landing program. On December 6, Jack witnessed the launch of the rocket three miles away, an experience he will never forget.

The ▲ Saturn 5 rocket carrying Apollo 17 was taken in November 1972.

At the beginning of 1973, DEC was preparing to write a demo game on their new GT40 computer. GT40 uses a vector CRT display, which is not common at that time, which can draw relatively clear graphics on the screen, and allows users to interact directly with the screen using an integrated stylus to achieve the effect of a "touch screen".

▲ GT40 computer

Coincidentally, the person who signed the task happened to be Jack. He immediately decided to develop a "moon landing simulator" with real pictures. According to an interview with foreign media Technologizer in 2009, Jack does not remember playing Jim's "moon landing simulator" because similar pirated games are already "commonplace".

Jack spent nine days developing the game and one day visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was involved in designing the lunar module, and obtained some of the real data from the lunar module in order to accurately calculate the fuel consumption of the thruster in the game.

The final product was named "Moonlander" by Jack. The Lunar Lander has an intuitive monochromatic game screen, so players no longer have to imagine landing on the moon out of thin air. In the course of the game, players need to use a stylus and click on the graphical interface in the upper right corner of the screen to adjust the engine thrust and flight angle of the lunar module so that it can slowly land on the lunar surface drawn with a large number of broken lines.

The ▲ vertical bar controls the thruster and the arrow controls the direction of the ship.

When it is about to land, the game screen will suddenly enlarge into a close-up of the lunar module landing. Once the player has made a smooth landing, an astronaut will walk out of the lunar module and plant a small flag on the lunar surface, and Armstrong's classic quote will be displayed at the bottom of the screen.

▲ "one small step for one person, one big step for mankind"

The Lunar Lander was distinguished by the introduction of game graphics for the first time, and soon became an essential computer program for all GT40 terminals, as well as a sample for all lunar landings to be referenced directly or indirectly in the coming decades.

The Lunar Lander has also set many world records. It uses graphics in the game for the first time, accurately depicting the existence of human beings. It was also the first game to include eggs-the movie "number one player", which was highly sought after by gamers a few years ago, may have made a mistake.

In the game, players have a chance to see a McDonald's restaurant on the moon. After the lunar module landed smoothly, the astronauts will go straight into the restaurant, order two cheeseburgers and a Big Mac, and "pack and take away."

If the lunar module hits McDonald's, the game will yell at the player: "you just destroyed the only McDonald's on the moon, you Clod."

The original version of the game also misspelled the word "McDonald" with an extra letter a. When foreign media A Critical Hit asked Jack about this in 2021, Jack replied that McDonald's was "not very common" at the beginning of 1972; he just thought something extra was needed in the game, so he added McDonald's.

This can also explain that after the Lunar Lander became popular abroad, many players will be confused about the mysterious buildings that appear from time to time in the game, let alone what the Big Mac is. In addition, some educators may not like implantable advertisements in games. In short, the McDonald's eggs have been removed by subsequent copycat versions, and are far less well-known than the Lunar Lander itself.

A Dutch educational short film by ▲ in 1979 shows a replica of the Moon Lander, which uses a towering mountain to cover the area where McDonald's usually exists.

Similar to Jim's experience, Jack didn't make a penny for the Lunar Lander, but his interest in computer graphics was reinforced by the experience of using GT40. He travels between several computer graphics companies, providing consulting services to a number of technology start-ups. On January 20, 2022, Jack died peacefully at the age of 75.

One day in the 1970s, programmer Howard Delman (Howard Delman) visited NASA's Ames Research Center and saw NASA employees playing a version of Lunar Lander and remembered the game.

Later, Howard went to Atari. When Atari wanted to launch a coin arcade game using vector displays, Howard, who took over the job, immediately thought of the Lunar Lander.

Atari has always been good at "improving" and commercializing existing game ideas. In the first issue of America's first game magazine, Electronic Games, Atari representatives made it clear that they would bury "Easter eggs" and the like in the game. This phrase created the concept of "colored egg" for the first time, and made many people ignore ideas that previously fit the positioning of "colored egg", such as McDonald's in the Moon Lander.

Thanks to the efforts of Howard and a number of colleagues, in August 1979, Atari launched the first arcade version of the Lunar Lander (Lunar Lander). The arcade version replaces the stylus that controls the lunar module with a rocker with a spring and introduces four different difficulties to make the game less hard-core. Players have to get a high score by landing several times, and double the score if they land in a smaller landing area at the slowest speed.

The coin put on the arcade is much cheaper than a computer, and the Lunar Lander naturally won a wider audience than the Lunar Lander. Because there was no Internet at this time, it was difficult to verify the relevant information, so some reporters praised Atari, saying that they had created "the only video game in the world that truly simulates the mission to the moon."

However, neither Jim nor Jack played the game and did not ask Atari for any financial compensation afterwards.

After the successful commercial attempt of "Lunar Lander", the "moon landing" category of games on the market ushered in a blowout period in which a hundred flowers blossomed. Still, according to Video Games magazine, "it seems that every company that can copy game tapes is trying to sell games on this theme."

In November 1979, Japan's Da Dong Company launched the arcade game "Moon Rescue". The player-controlled spacecraft sets off from a mother ship, uses thrusters to slow down the landing speed, evades the non-existent asteroid belt, lands on a designated platform, and rescues astronauts trapped on the moon. Unlike the original Lunar Lander, the ship can only be translated horizontally.

Perhaps inspired by its own "space invaders" (or "little bees"), Lunar Rescue has added a flight shooting session. When the spacecraft lifts off, the asteroid belt is replaced by an alien flying saucer, and the button to start the thruster becomes the fire button.

In 1981, the newly established HAL Lab developed the Jupiter Landing based on Commodore's VIC-20 computer. The VIC-20 is relatively cheap as a home computer, and the Jupiter Landing has been welcomed by many computer players in Europe and the United States, and has since been copied on the better-selling Commodore 64.

▲ "Jupiter Landing" designed a high-score landing area in the same style as "Lunar Lander".

In 1983, Retrofire, a game imitating the Lunar Lander, was added to Atari's personal computer. The game introduces a third dimension for the first time and adds obstacles to the lunar surface that players need to avoid in time, such as radiation zones and volcanoes.

In 1990, Japanese publisher Pack-In-Video launched a "Lunar Lander" sold only in Japan on Nintendo Game Boy. Around the moon landing, the game designs two additional links: before the moon landing, the player has to control the rocket engine and lift off into the universe; after the moon landing, the player has to act as an astronaut to collect enough minerals under the encirclement of aliens.

▲ landing part

▲ mining section

In the same year, Microsoft's Windows 3 operating system introduced a shareware called Lander, which faithfully restored the game content of the original Lunar Lander using a 16-bit color screen.

4 since the Lunar Lander, similar moon landing games have nothing more than following two different ideas. The first way of thinking pays attention to authenticity, using all the technical means that can be used at that time to simulate the moon landing experience that previous works are difficult to achieve. The second way of thinking pays more attention to gameplay, introducing some additional games related to space themes in addition to the moon landing game itself.

Of course, with the progress of game development technology and concept, you can have both development ideas.

In 2012, Australia's Shovsoft Studio launched a 3D version of the independent game "Lunar Flight". The game aims to build a full picture of the moon and lunar module, supports four views, including astronaut first person, and even supports VR devices, making it an undisputed HD reproduction of the Lunar Lander.

In order to improve the gameplay, Lunar Flight has designed a mission system in which players have to do chores such as delivering goods and collecting terrain data after landing safely. You can get money for completing tasks, and money can be used to upgrade aircraft and equipment to improve the efficiency of completing tasks, thus providing a virtuous circle for players to immerse themselves in.

The Kambara Space Program, which was released in 2015, is the aggregator of space simulation games. Although the game takes place in a fictional galaxy, it is highly consistent with the laws of physics in the real world. Players will have full control of the Kambara space program, even rockets and spaceships will have to build their own, and the exploration of space will not stop at the moon.

Like Jack's Lunar Lander, NASA has his eye on the Kambara Space Program. At the 2016 E3 show, an employee of NASA Jet Propulsion Lab said publicly that half of the lab's staff were fascinated by the game.

No man has landed on the moon since Apollo 17, and further space exploration is a long way off. On the contrary, it is a moon landing simulation game derived from the lunar landing frenzy, which inherits the human desire for deep space, and then after half a century of evolution and evolution, it is still enduring.

One day, when humans do set up the first McDonald's on the moon, there will certainly be more real and interesting mock games on the market, and there will certainly be countless space-hungry players addicted to it.

Referenc

1. Forty Years of Lunar Lander https://www.technologizer.com

2. 50 Years on the Moon: The Evolution of Lunar Lander Games https://www.pcmag.com

3. The True First Easter Egg: Ready Player One Was Wrong https://www.acriticalhit.com/

4. Moonlander: One Giant Leap For Game Design https://www.acriticalhit.com

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: Zhaoyue

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