Moon Patrol - New Joystick & Championship Course

[Tetlee]

Not sure if you guys have general game threads like this, surprised there isn't a TI-99 game sub-forum. Please feel free to delete if not really in-keeping with the spirit of the forum. 

 

Despite loving Moon Patrol back in the day in the arcades, I don't remember owning it on my TI99 back in the 80's. Since rebuying this wonderful piece of hardware again earlier this year(together with a ton of games carts including this one) I played this one a bit and was pretty disappointed with it. Was it not a good version of the old classic? or had the game just not aged as well as I had expected? Well it turns out neither....

 

That opinion changed today thanks in part to trying it again with my fairly recently bought Monster Joystick(highly recommended BTW), meaning I could also configure the second button to take the place of "up" to jump(what a difference!), but then also noticing what I'd been stupidly missing.... Championship Course! What a blast, suddenly loving this game all over again.

 

I wonder if I'm the only one to make the silly mistake of jumping straight into the game each time instead of seeing an alterative mode to select on the title screen?

[pixelpedant]

You automatically go in to the Championship course if you get through the entire regular course, so I imagine a fair number of people would have ended up exploring it for the first time that way.  Just by getting through the complete course.  At least, that was the case for me. 

 

I can certainly imagine that two-button joystick solution would be appealing, yeah.  Though I've tended to play it with a hacked gamepad, and I don't tend to mind "up to jump" as much on a gamepad.

[Tetlee]

On 5/20/2021 at 8:23 PM, pixelpedant said:

You automatically go in to the Championship course if you get through the entire regular course, so I imagine a fair number of people would have ended up exploring it for the first time that way.  Just by getting through the complete course.  At least, that was the case for me. 

 

I can certainly imagine that two-button joystick solution would be appealing, yeah.  Though I've tended to play it with a hacked gamepad, and I don't tend to mind "up to jump" as much on a gamepad.

I have to be honest I can never get past those 5 little white floor mines on the third stage(J?) in the regular course, they get me every time so being able to jump straight into the action is a true blessing for me?

Edited May 21, 2021 by Tetlee

[pixelpedant]

57 minutes ago, Tetlee said:

I have to be honest I can never get past those 5 little white floor mines on the third stage(J?) in the regular course, they get me every time so being able to jump straight into the action is a true blessing for me?

 

I can understand that.  You have to manage your speed carefully in that section, for sure.  But the trick, really, is that the section is handled mainly via maximum length jumps rather than minimum length jumps.  It's mostly about jumping them two at a time.  Natural, though, that the instinct in a lot of people would be to try to slow up and do short jumps.