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lrescue: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Lunar Rescue (c) 1979 Taito.

Lunar Rescue is a combination 2-D simple flight simulator and 2-Dimensional shooter. You start the game by floating within your mother ship. You then either must release your lander or after a pre-determined period of time, the mother ship will forcibly eject it. You first have to navigate through 6 rows of asteroids to make it to one of the landing platforms. You have 6 platforms initially but each landing will eliminate one since there is 1 platform per astronaut you have to rescue. On your return trip up, the screen changes and now you have saucers trying to destroy you with laser fire. Again, you will either have 3 or 6 rows of saucers depending if there are meteors in the area. You then must successfully land in the docking bay of the mother ship to get credit for a successful rescue of 1 astronaut.

- TECHNICAL -

CPU Board Number : CVN00004

ROM Board Number : CVD70005

Prom Stickers : LR

Main CPU : 8080 (@ 1.9968 Mhz)

Sound Chips : Discrete circuitry, speaker

Players : 2

Buttons : 3 (ROTATE LEFT, ROTATE RIGHT, THRUST/FIRE)

- TRIVIA -

Released in November 1979 in Japan.

Lunar Rescue was the follow-up game to "Space Invaders". Unfortunately, it was released at the same time as "Asteroids", which pretty much eclipsed most games until the 1980's. Lunar Rescue is actually a little more complicated then its Space Invaders cousin. You actually have to keep track of a few more things to successfully make it through this game. This is one of those 'sleeper' games that didn't get a big following since Asteroids was also out.

Before stage 4, you get a cute intermission from the aliens of "Space Invaders" telling you to 'Fight'.

A Lunar Rescue unit appears in the 1982 movie 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High'.

Original Taito releases:

Lunar Rescue

T.T Lunar Rescue

Lunar Rescue

Licensed products:

Galaxy Rescue (Universal)

Lunar Rescue (Video Game UK Ltd.)

Unauthorized releases:

Lunar Rescue (Model Racing)

Destination Earth

- SCORING -

Large Saucer : 30 points

Small Saucer: 50 points

Platform : 50, 100, 150 points

Each man rescued has an increasing value until stage four where it is at its maximum. The values are :

Stage 1 : 50 points

Stage 2 : 100 points

Stage 3 : 150 points

Stage 4 : 300 points

Every stage after stage 4 is 300 points.

Fuel remaining is added to your score (i.e. if you have 560 Fuel left, then add 560 points to your score) at the end of a wave.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* When you start the game, your lander will be sitting in the docking bay of the mother ship. You can release your lander by pressing the firing button or wait until the mother ship forcibly ejects you. It's better to do it yourself lest the mother ship ejects you on top of an asteroid.

* Fuel is a precious commodity in this game, use it sparingly. You only have 800 units of fuel to rescue 6 men. If you burn all your fuel off on the first rescue, you will have nothing to fall back on for the other 5.

* When you leave the mother ship, try to navigate through the asteroids without using any fuel. Since your lander doesn't accelerate during the fall, you will be going at a constant speed down. Try to maneuver between the rocks to land on a platform. You also don't need to decelerate when landing, you just land.

* Try to knock out the harder platforms first. This mean that this is land on the harder to reach ones first on the sides. A good strategy is to get the right hand-one first, then the two left-hand ones, then finish by landing on the three in the middle.

* If you must use fuel, use quick bursts to get into position to land on a platform. Fuel burns up very quickly in this game so some quick shots to the thrusters should keep you out of trouble. Keep in mind, as the waves progress, the asteroids move faster and become more numerous.

* Once you've landed, the little guy will run over and get in your lander. The screen will then change and you will see 3 to 6 rows of saucers blocking your path. Again, as the waves progress, the saucers and meteors get faster and more numerous. There are a couple of different strategies for this section :

1) If you only see 3 lower rows of saucers, look to the upper right or left corner. More then likely, some meteors will be coming diagonally down to the opposite corner. The best solution is to quickly blast a path through the saucers and get above the meteors trajectory.

2) If you see 6 rows of saucers, then you need to blast a path through them to get to your mother ship. Keep in mind that the fire button acts as a dual fire/thrust button. When you fire, you accelerate yourself up just a bit. In other words, no point blank shooting or you may end up taking out the saucer with your lander. When you have cleared a path, use the fire button to get yourself quickly above the saucers.

* The saucers firing just drop their shots on you. Because of their numbers, you may find yourself surrounded by enemy fire. The best solution is again to blast a path through them. Once a saucer is destroyed, it doesn't come back. Also keep in mind that you can only have one shot on the screen at a time.

* Once you get 1 row from the bottom of the mother ship, it will stop and open its docking bay door. If you are too far away, you will fail to dock with the mother ship and get destroyed by the top of the screen. If you hit the side of the mother ship, the man you are rescuing will unfortunately fall from your lander to his death to the planet below. Plan out the best strategy to make sure that you stay in the middle so you can catch the mother ship with minimal effort.

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Sony PlayStation 2 (July 26, 2005; "Taito Memories Joukan [Model SLPM-66057]")

Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Taito Memories Vol. 1")

Sony PSP [JP] (January 5, 2006; "Taito Memories Pocket [Model ULJM-05076]")

Microsoft XBOX (2006, "Taito Legends 2")

Sony PlayStation 2 (2006, "Taito Legends 2")

* Computers :

PC [CD-ROM] (2006, "Taito Legends 2")

* Others :

Arcade Legends : Space Invaders TV Game (2004 - Radica Games)

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

F.A.Q. by Kevin Butler A.K.A. War Doc

MAME Info:

0.08 [Nicola Salmoria, Michael Strutts]

Artwork available

Samples required

NOTE:

- A free credit is awarded on the first docking of the first game.

WIP:

- 7th December 2009: Mr. Do - Thanks to some great photos as Derek's Basement Arcade, I added in instruction cards to the bezels for Lunar Rescue.

- 2nd May 2009: Mr. Do - Antny did an awesome job on the really flaky Lunar Rescue artwork, which we had courtesy of the BYOAC/CAG artwork.

- 0.125u9: Gyrovision and David Haywood added clone Moon Lander (bootleg of Lunar Rescue).

- 0.123u1: RansAckeR added DIP locations for Lunar Rescue. Changed 'Unknown' dipswitches to 'Unused'.

- 0.113u2: Changed 8080 CPU clock speed to 1996800 Hz, visible area to 224x260 and VSync to 59.541985 Hz.

- 0.109u1: Robert correct samples being used in Lunar Rescue and clones. Changed SN76477 to Speaker sound and added samples (alienexplosion, rescueshipexplosion, beamgun, thrust, bonus2, bonus3.wav, shootingstar, stepl and steph.wav).

- 0.107: David Haywood added clone Lunar Rescue (Model Racing bootleg).

- 18th March 2006: Corrado Tomaselli dumped Lunar Rescue (Model Racing bootleg).

- 0.61: Changed palettesize back to 8 colors.

- 0.58: Changed palettesize from 8 to 32770 colors.

- 0.37b1: Added SN76477 sound (samples 0.wav and 10 - 18.wav are no longer needed).

- 0.36RC2: Zsolt Vasvari fixed colors in Lunar Rescue. Added color prom. Changed palettesize to 8 colors.

- 0.35b3: Changed description of clone 'Galaxy Rescue (bootleg?)' to 'Galaxy Rescue'.

- 0.34b8: David Winter added clone Galaxy Rescue (bootleg?).

- 0.25: Valerio Verrando fixed the Space Invaders driver to include high score saving and 100% arcade-perfect colors for Lunar Rescue; since some bootleg machines did not use this colorful overlay, Destination Earth retains the Space Invaders color scheme. Game is playable with accurate colors and sound. Control: Arrows = Move around, CTRL = Fire and T = Activate Tilt. Known issues: A free credit is awarded on the first docking of the first game.

- 0.08: Nicola Salmoria added Lunar Rescue (Taito 1979) and clone Destination Earth (bootleg 1979).

Other Emulators:

* AAE

* HiVE

* Laser

* Retrocade

* Sparcade

* Tickle

* VAntAGE

Recommended Games (Moon):

Lunar Lander

Lunar Rescue

Moonwar

Moon Patrol

Seicross

Horizon

Mag Max

Romset: 13 kb / 7 files / 9.48 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Lunar Rescue</description>

<manufacturer>Taito</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</configuration>

</game>

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