Lunar Lander (1979 video game)

Lunar Lander is a 1979 space flight simulation video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It was the most popular version of the "Lunar Lander" concept to date, surpassing the prior Moonlander (1973) and numerous text-based games; most later iterations of the concept are based on Atari's version.

The player controls a lunar landing module, viewed from the side, and attempts to land safely on the Moon. The player can rotate the module and burn fuel to fire a thruster, attempting to gently land on marked areas. The scenario resets after every successful landing or crash, with new terrain, until no fuel remains. Coins can be inserted at any time to buy more fuel.

Development of the game began with the creation of a vector graphics engine by Atari after the release of the 1978 Cinematronics game Space Wars. Engine co-designer Wendi Allen (credited as Howard Delman) proposed using it to create a Lunar Lander game, a genre which dates to 1969. Allen and Rich Moore developed the game. It was Atari's first vector-based game and the first multiple-perspective video game, changing views to zoom in as the module approached the Moon.

Lunar Lander sold 4,830 units, a moderate success, but was soon overtaken by the November 1979 Asteroids, and 300 Asteroids units were shipped in Lunar Lander-branded cabinets. Lunar Lander was one of the first two games to be registered with the United States Copyright Office, though the prior games in the genre kept the gameplay from being patented. Lunar Lander was included in a 2012 art installation at the Dublin Science Gallery. Since 2000, it has been included in numerous compilation releases of Atari games.