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USS MOONSWEEPER --ALERT!
Your mission: to reach and rescue miners stranded on hostile moons in Star Quadrant Jupiter²!
Warning! Proceed with extreme caution. Deadly photon torch and space bullet showers reported. Aurora flare activity in Quadrant at lethal levels. Take evasive action, then land on as many moons as you can. Avoid colliding with lunar landmarks.
Unidentified alien ships patrol moons and launch armed surface destroyers. Survive at all costs or the miners won't make it!
Game Information
Post your scores right here in this thread, and I will add them to the list. Remember to play the game with the recommended game mode and difficulty settings as shown above so that your scores will be consistent with everyone elses. The deadline for posting scores is Wednesday June 30th at 1:00 AM (CST). |
Current High Scores
Best Tips
Challenges
TwinGalaxies Top 3
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Scoring Points in Moonsweeper
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Hints and Tips
The Manual
As always, you really should read the manual. In case you don't have the manual, AtariAge has a typed copy available online. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide any specific hints, but it's worth reading anyways so you know what you're doing.
We have played this game before in the HSC, check it out here.
LarcenTyler
- If you see a Satellite, fire a missile at it (pull back and press the button.) If you hit it, it's worth big points!
- Don't fire indiscriminately! For one thing, you can only have one shot on the screen at a time. More importantly, though, is the fact that miners can accidentally be shot, which gets you no points, but leaves you with a sour aftertaste in your mouth!
- The difficulty of each moon, from easiest to hardest, is as follows: Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red. Note that on the Blue moons, the accelerator rings, which are used to take off after rescuing six miners, appear in a straight line, while on other moons they appear in a random pattern.
- Your speed is increased on each moon, depending on the difficulty. When you're on the red moons, note that you can't decelerate at all, meaning you must be very careful when dodging towers and picking up miners.
shadow460
IIRC, only two "enemy" objects can be rendered on the moons at a time. These can be the satellite, towers, miners, the lander ship, surface destroyer, or any combination thereof. Having the lander ship or destroyer on screen reduces the chances that a miner will appear. On yellow moons only, there can be two destroyers on screen at a time.
I agree with hitting only the red and yellow moons, although you can still net a few points from the blue and green ones.
The surface destroyer fires at set intervals. Learn the timing to be able to slide between the bullets. Also, sometimes it moves in set patterns. Get to the edge of the pattern between shots, then knock out the destroyer.
The destroyer's first shot is usually aimed right at you regardless of where you are. Be moving if the destroyer touches down.
After the first shot, the destroyer usually does not shoot all the way to the right and left edges of the screen.
Get under the lander ship as soon as it appears, even on the blue moons. Start shooting directly at it. Often times you'll nail a few destroyers in a row as they drop to the surface. You might be able to nail the lander ship, too. Often two or three lander ships will appear in the same location, making for easy pickings especially on green and yellow moons.
You can skip some accelerator rings when taking off. IIRC, you can destroy them, too.
When hunting for miners, line up with the radar if it's near the edge of the screen. When you see something on the horizon, shoot first and ask questions later. If you kill a miner, that sucks, but if you hit a tower instead, you lose a ship and the rest of miners on that moon die anyway.
Keep shooting in the orbital screen. It's vital that you score a few hits to make up for the points your shield consumes. Also, at the very beginning there is no penalty for using the shield until you've scored some points.
Also, I'm finding that occasionally three enemies will be rendered. One is always a Lander Ship, one is always a Destroyer, and the third is either another Destroyer or a tower. When this happens, the Lander Ship flies away.
Don't discount shooting the Lander Ships. They're worth 300 points each on the red moons, and they appear far more frequently than the Patrol Satellites do. That 300 points each adds up really fast. Often times you'll hit the falling Destroyer in the process, and a second shot will take down the Lander Ship for a total of 380 points, then it'll all happen again straight away for another 380 points, and so on.
--Zero
