Moon Alert (1984)

Moon Alert was released in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum 48K. Published by Ocean Software, the game was created by Ken Farmer, Jon Mayers, and F. David Thorpe, who designed the loading screen. Bob Wakelin and Edward Blair Wilkins contributed the inlay and poster art.

The game is an arcade shoot-em-up featuring side-view 2D graphics and horizontal scrolling. It supports up to two players and offers control options via cursor keys, Kempston joystick, or the Interface 2 joystick. The title is based on the original arcade coin-op developed by Atari Games and Irem Corporation.

The cassette version was priced at £5.90. This release was exclusive to the ZX Spectrum platform.

Moon Alert received high critical acclaim, maintaining an average magazine score of 94.5%. It earned a Crash Smash award from Crash magazine with a score of 89%, while Big K magazine awarded it a perfect 3 out of 3 rating.

In the USSR and Russia, the game was known under the titles 'Lunokhod' and 'Avariya na Lune'. It saw multiple TR-DOS releases, including two distinct Russian translations. Magazines like Micro and Emulate featured POKE codes for the game, which also appeared in various cracked cassette versions.