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Lunar Battle

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Updated
ByVecFever

Atari prototype, 1981

Lunar Battle is an early prototype romset of Gravitar which survived in a few Atari pcbs (and I think prototype cabinets might have survived, even). Interesting to look at once you have played Gravitar a bit just to see how an Atari arcade game evolved over development time.

Input

Note: if the menu uses a 5-button controller as input (expert option) Gravitar respects this as an overriding option, too.

Buttons

  • Button 1: turn left
  • Button 2: turn right
  • Button 3: thrust
  • Button 4: fire
  • All 4 buttons at the same time or joystick-y: shield/tractor

Digital Joystick

  • Button 2: shield/tractor
  • Button 3: thrust
  • Button 4: fire
  • Joystick-x: turn left/right

Options

  • Reset Highscores
  • Input: Buttons / Digital Joystick
  • Game Info: ”                           Welcome to Lunar Battle, an early prototype ROM of Gravitar. More of a curiosity, really, but while I was working on Gravitar it made sense to spend a bit of time to bring this up, too, and look at the code in its earlier form.                It is interesting that Gravitar started out as an even harder game – it is regarded as already very if not even too hard – but that does make sense: when you develop a game you automatically become really good at it so the tendency might be to err on the hard side. Anyways, Lunar Battle has one solar system less and has many small differences besides the skill level (for example the (c)opyright character is just a ‘C’ inside the spawn circle, this explains why even in gravitar drawing the copyright string is split in two – in the (c) symbol and the rest – eventually the (c) symbol was added and moved in front of the string but not for some reason added to the copyright string itself. This actually does not work perfectly on a Vectrex so had to be handled manually like so many other things..).                     Well, by now I have learned that the programmers themselves stated that they were never able to beat all Gravitar worlds themselves. Makes you wonder why they started with something even harder then.                                        “

Localization

//NAME="LUNARBAT"
//

GERMAN[] = {
    { 0, 0, 0}
};

FRENCH[] = {
    { 0, 0, "                           Bienvenue dans Lunar Battle, un des premiers prototypes de la ROM de Gravitar. C'est plus une curiosité en réalité, mais pendant que je travaillais sur Gravitar, il était logique d'y consacrer un peu de temps pour pouvoir en dire quelque chose et regarder comment se présentait le code dans sa forme antérieure.                Il est intéressant de noter que Gravitar a commencé comme un jeu encore plus difficile - déjà qu'il est considéré comme très, voire trop difficile - mais cela se comprend : quand on développe un jeu, on devient naturellement très bon et il est donc prévisible de ne pas apprécier la difficulté à sa juste valeur. Quoi qu'il en soit, Lunar Battle a un système solaire en moins et présente de nombreuses petites différences en plus du haut niveau d'exigence requis (par exemple, la lettre (c) des droits d'auteur est juste un 'C' à l'intérieur du cercle qui le délimite, ce qui explique même pourquoi dans l'affichage de Gravitar, l'écriture du 'copyright' est divisée en deux - il y a le symbole (c) et le reste - finalement le symbole (c) a été ajouté et déplacé devant la suite des lettres composant le 'copyright' mais pas, pour une raison indéterminée, intégrée à celle-ci. Dans les faits, cela ne donne pas de bons résultats sur un Vectrex: il a fallu intervenir manuellement et procéder à quelques manipulations comme c'est également le cas pour plein d'autres choses...).                     Dans tout ça, j'ai appris que les programmeurs eux-mêmes ont déclaré qu'ils n'ont jamais été capables de finir tous les mondes de Gravitar par leurs propres moyens. Dans ce contexte, on peut se demander comment ils ont pu commencer sur la base d'un niveau encore plus relevé à l'époque.                                        "}
};

ENGLISH[] = {
    { 0, 0, "                           Welcome to Lunar Battle, an early prototype ROM of Gravitar. More of a curiosity, really, but while I was working on Gravitar it made sense to spend a bit of time to bring this up, too, and look at the code in its earlier form.                It is interesting that Gravitar started out as an even harder game - it is regarded as already very if not even too hard - but that does make sense: when you develop a game you automatically become really good at it so the tendency might be to err on the hard side. Anyways, Lunar Battle has one solar system less and has many small differences besides the skill level (for example the (c)opyright character is just a 'C' inside the spawn circle, this explains why even in gravitar drawing the copyright string is split in two - in the (c) symbol and the rest - eventually the (c) symbol was added and moved in front of the string but not for some reason added to the copyright string itself. This actually does not work perfectly on a Vectrex so had to be handled manually like so many other things..).                     Well, by now I have learned that the programmers themselves stated that they were never able to beat all Gravitar worlds themselves. Makes you wonder why they started with something even harder then.                                        "}
};
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