A game I had as a kid, playing Moon Patrol now induces a huge sense of nostalgia, as it’s a game I played an awful lot, well over three decades ago.

I had no idea at the time that it was a port of an arcade game, but it is; Japanese developer Irem released the Moon Patrol arcade machine in 1982, and it’s credited as the game that first used full parallax scrolling.

Though of course the Atari 2600 can’t hope to fully replicate the visual effects or detail of the arcade original, it actually does a pretty decent job, with a sort of faked, pseudo-parallax scrolling effect on its ever moving moonscape.

In Moon Patrol, you’re in a perpetually moving moon buggy, blasting rocks, jumping over craters and mines, and getting rid of pesky alien craft that attack from above, some of which can actually create craters in the landscape somewhat dynamically with their weapons.

Your moon buggy’s speed can be adjusted by pulling left or pushing right on the controller; left to slow down, right to accelerate. The slower you go, the shorter your jump distance and height; go faster and you can jump further and higher. When you press fire, your lasers shoot horizontally and vertically simultaneously, allowing you to blast deadly moon rocks before you crash into them as well as deal with the rather persistent alien ships above you.

It almost has the feel of a modern endless runner title, and it’s actually still incredibly playable and addictive to this day. Getting into a rhythm of judging jump distances by your speed while shooting UFOs is great fun, and even though the learning curve is steep, and the challenge level pretty high, it does play fair and you can learn the level layouts to properly get in the zone.

The official Atari joystick, however, feels really stiff and not up to the multitasking you’ll need to do when playing Moon Patrol; I found that using an Atari 7800 controller (the recent, official, re-released CX78+ Gamepad specifically) made things a lot easier and improved my game immensely.

It’s also worth noting that Moon Patrol works perfectly well on the Atari 2600+ console, which I can’t recommend enough to retro game fans. Though its mere existence has driven up the price of original Atari 2600 and 7800 games, thanks to its compatibility with the cartridges from both consoles, there’s still plenty of titles out there that can be purchased for reasonable amounts.

So, Moon Patrol is a game that’s well worth checking out, whether you have the original or 2600+ hardware. Though the nostalgia was strong for me with this one, the addictive gameplay kept me coming back for more, long after I removed my rose tinted glasses.