Meteor Mission II

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meteor Mission II
Developer(s)	Bill Hogue
Publisher(s)	Big Five Software
Platform(s)	Arcade, TRS-80
Release date	1982
Genre(s)	Shooter
Mode(s)	Single player

Meteor Mission II is a clone of the Taito arcade game Lunar Rescue released by Big Five Software for the RadioShack/Tandy TRS-80 home computer (the monochrome Model I and Model III, pre-dating the more well known TRS-80 Color Computer).

The game is similar in concept to Lunar Lander (without the complex physics), but makes the whole thing more interesting by adding a rescue element. Once you navigate through a moving meteor belt, and land on one of several landing pads, a small figure runs out from the side of the screen, enters your ship, and then you have to fire and navigate your way back through the meteor field and dock with the mother ship.

The title Meteor Mission II implies the game may have been inspired by the BBC Micro game Meteor Mission (Acornsoft), another Lunar Rescue clone also released in 1982, rather than the original arcade machine. The author claims he had already written a 'completely unrelated' Meteor Misison game that was never published.[1]

The game was the fifth of seven arcade clones programmed for the TRS-80 by Bill Hogue who left the TRS-80 platform in 1982. He would later that year create the platform game Miner 2049er for the Atari 800.