How to play Moonsweeper online
- Steer: left and right arrow keys
- Speed up / slow down on a moon: up and down arrow keys
- Fire (and start the game): Space bar
- Shield in orbit, or shoot at ships and satellites overhead on a moon: hold the down arrow and press Space
- Choose a skill level (1–4): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Restart: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
Gameplay
Each mission starts in orbit. Your ship slides left and right along one line while space bullets, photon torches and aurora flares rain down. Dodge them, shoot them for 10 points each, or raise your shield, which drains your score for as long as it is on. When a moon drifts close, steer onto it and the autopilot takes you down. You cannot land with the shield on.
On the surface the landscape rushes towards you. You pick up miners by flying over them, and a radar marker shows where the next one will appear. Crash into one of the towers and you lose the ship and everyone on board. Launcher Ships drop Surface Destroyers, which sweep across your path, fire missiles and carry off miners. Lunar Satellites never attack, but they are worth a lot of points.
With six miners on board, the miner symbols at the top of the screen flash. Now fly through the Accelerator Rings to build up enough speed to escape the moon’s gravity. After each blast-off you return to orbit and the game moves up a level. You get an extra ship for every 10,000 points, up to nine.
A moon’s colour shows how hard the rescue will be: blue is easiest with many miners, then green, yellow and finally red, where miners are far apart and destroyers attack hard. The Select switch sets which colours can appear: level 1 has only blue and green moons, levels 2 and 3 add yellow, and level 4 includes red.
| Moon | Miner | Tower, destroyer or missile | Launcher Ship | Satellite | Blast-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue | 10 | 10 | 200 | 300 | 980 |
| Green | 20 | 10 | 200 | 500 | 1225 |
| Yellow | 30 | 40 | 300 | 700 | 1470 |
| Red | 40 | 80 | 300 | 1000 | 1960 |
Tips
- Pick your moon. Blue moons are safer and quicker to clear; red moons pay far more for the same work.
- Save the shield for emergencies. It costs points the whole time it is on.
- Slow down near towers. A tower crash costs you every miner you are carrying.
- Zig-zag through the rings. Only on blue moons are the rings in a straight line. If you miss the speed you need, another set will follow.
History
Bob Smith left Atari in 1981 as one of the founders of Imagic, and also made Star Voyager, Riddle of the Sphinx and Dragonfire for the company. Moonsweeper came out in 1983 and was also released for the ColecoVision and several home computers. The AtariAge write-up compares its play to Atari’s later Solaris and points out a nice touch: the 2600 plays a few notes of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” when you lose a ship. The version on this page is the PAL (European) cartridge, so colours and speed may differ slightly from the American release.
