Moon Shuttle
| Moon Shuttle | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Nichibutsu |
| Publisher(s) | Nichibutsu, Taito Corporation |
| Year released | 1981 |
| System(s) | Arcade |
| Japanese title | ムーンシャトル |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | Shooter |
| Players | 1-2 |
| Modes | Single player, Multiplayer |
Moon Shuttle is a horizontal scrolling shooter arcade game that was released by Nichibutsu in 1981, and licensed to Taito America Corporation for US manufacture and distribution; it runs upon Namco's Galaxian hardware (a Zilog Z80, running at 3.072 MHz), and is one of the first games to have a coin-adding feature (so if a player inserts another coin during gameplay, he or she will receive more lives).
The player must use a three-directional (up, right and down) joystick to take control of the eponymous "Moon Shuttle" (which is always moving forward, but can be speeded up during Meteor sequences by pushing the joystick to the right) and a single button to make it fire shots at the enemies; the Meteors come in three different sizes (50-point large, 30-point medium, and 20-point small), while three of the other five enemy types (Bomb Launchers, Expandos and Men-O-War) are also all worth 30 points. Blob Men also come in three different sizes (30-point large, 20-point medium, & 10-point small), and Combrades are worth 50 points - and the game starts off with a Meteor sequence (in which a player can earn an extra life without having to insert another coin, if he or she manages to shoot the hidden rockets in the shower), followed by an attack from the other five enemy types. The game's cycle will then repeat, and the game continues in this way until the player is about to run out of lives (at which point he or she can insert another coin for more); however, the amount of times a player can do this is obviously limited by their pocket change. When a player loses their final life on their final coin, the game will be over - and if they had scored over 5000 points, the game will go into high-score mode.
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Title screen.
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Upright arcade cabinet.
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Screenshot of the game.
