Lunar Rescue vs. This Planet Sucks

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

To all you arcade experts, I'm just curious as to how good a job TPS does as a Lunar Rescue home version?

 

Basically I've only heard TPS is harder. But what about everything else?

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[+Nathan Strum]

It's pretty well done, but it is a bit different from Lunar Rescue (which is playable in MAME, incidentally).

 

The main differences are:

 

1) In TPS, the rescuees run back and forth on the landing pads. Apparently, they aren't too bright, because they usually end up getting squashed by your ship. In LR, they wait for the ship to land, and run out from the sides.

 

2) On the way back up, in LR you can fire and blow away the enemies. You can't do that in TPS. You just have to dodge them.

 

3) There's more momentum fighting against you in TPS, so you can't manuever as quickly. Your ship is more responsive in LR.

 

4) In LR, you have to resuce six people per wave, not three. Once you land on a platform, that platform disappears, and you have to then land on the smaller one beneath it the next time. In TPS, you only have three platforms per wave (even though they're stacked, like in LR, they don't disappear when cleared).

 

5) In LR, while you're flying back up, periodically the enemies will freeze, and a giant meteor will come flying at you. TPS is missing this, but it's hard enough as-is.

[joeybastard]

TPS is much harder and much better then Lunar Rescue. I think it's actually a contender for the top ten all time best VCS games.

[liveinabin]

..which is also helped by the beautiful label and manual

[NE146]

Sort of an off-topic rant here, but yknow it's funny as an arcade freak back in the day I should've played Lunar Rescue more.. but I avoided it like the plague. To me it was the unwelcome bastardization of Space Invaders (it would frequently show up in a hacked up Space Invaders cabinet.. which would piss me off ) I'd try it out but it just wasn't the same feel and I'd end up wondering where my Space Invaders went. That was the beginning of the end of the Space Invaders craze and more and more arcade games would start showing up, and the funny thing was it was always in the same Space Invaders cabinets, sometimes with the planet background still intact! Those things were re-used over and over and over again till they fell apart Which is too bad since they were such beautiful cabs

 

I've tried tps.. It seems real good but that bad taste remains to this day and couldn't really get into it. Also I have yet to really play LR in Mame... go figure

[Godzilla]

i think ne1 is just an SI freeek who sells it on the weekend.

[+Nathan Strum]

Ooooo... a Quantum machine!

 

Now that's a cool (and very rare) game, indeed.

[Godzilla]

whats quantum?

[Albert]

whats quantum?

 

Killer List of Video Games: Quantum

 

Quantum is an odd arcade game from Atari, in which you use a trackball to capture particles by circling around them. I've only had the opportunity to play the game once, at an arcade a long time ago.

 

..Al

[Godzilla]

hum sounds interesting. i guess the whole quickly draw a circle at the beggining of the level 'trick' could take a lot of the fun out of the game. I wonder if thats why it tanked. GCC usually made good stuff.

[JB]

hum sounds interesting. i guess the whole quickly draw a circle at the beggining of the level 'trick' could take a lot of the fun out of the game. I wonder if thats why it tanked. GCC usually made good stuff.

I predict people wanted to blow shit up, and there was no shit with which to engage in the process of blowing up with.

[Csonicgo]

[NE146]

Well put it this way, Quantum to the arcade collecting scene is sort of like Quadrun is to the console collecting scene (maybe even more desired actually...)