From "Invasion of the Space Invaders" (1982)

By Martis Amis.

Lunar Lander is a game for owlish adolescents and gentle old hippies. It is qualitatively different from any other game. Most video creations stress a certain sort of game-activity. Missile Command is a game of interception, Lunar Rescue of dodging, PacMan of munch-accumulation (which perhaps explains why it is the only video game with any kind of following among women). Most games, of course, are games of blasting, wasting, creaming, smashing. Lunar Lander, on the other hand, is simply a game of landing.

No ghouls or hellcats lurk on the rocky moon where Lander lands; no rockets, photons or zipships buzz its slow descent. This is a game without aliens, without adversaries. The only enemy is the player’s own hamfistedness.

Like Asteroids, the Lunar screen is simply a matter of outline, white on black. The effect is well-defined, pristine, classy: it makes many of the more colourful games look like an infant’s paintbox or a cutprice carpet. The Lander’s module comes bleeping in over the spiky terrain. Various landing sites are indicated – graded according to difficulty (though I confess that I’ve never really seen the difference: once you get down to Landing, they’re all pretty much the same). Rotating right or left, and steadying the pod with deft surges on the reverse-thrust console, the Lander picks his spot and gingerly / descends, counteracting the simulated gravitational pull, friction and momentum.

As you home in on the flat landing-pad, the game pulls its best stunt: you switch to close-up. The landing then becomes a question of ticklish fine-tuning, as you adjust and correct and over-correct and re-adjust for touchdown. There are several grades of landing (good, hard, crash), as indeed there are four grades of ‘mission’ (Training, Cadet, Prime and Command – selectable at the beginning of the game), and points are awarded accordingly. The controls are beautifully responsive, though on any mission more advanced than Training you are going to have frequent recourse to the Abort button, which gives you escape thrust and resets the display for a fresh attempt. That little pod goes twirling out of control very easily, and no amount of thrust will tame it back into line. The top of the screen is adorned with altimeters and speedos and fuel readings, most of which can be safely ignored. Don’t bother with the readouts: just put more money in the slot.

Elsewhere: Mark O'Connell, "The Arcades Project."

From Schiller's letters on aesthetics

"No doubt the artist is the child of his time, but unhappy for him if he is its disciple or even its favorite!

"[...] Cherish triumphant truth in the modest sanctuary of your heart; give it an incarnate form through beauty, that it may not only be in the understanding that does homage to it, but that feeling may lovingly grasp its appearance. And that you may not by any chance take from external reality the model which you yourself ought to furnish, do not venture into its dangerous society before you are assured in your own heart that you have a good escort furnished by ideal nature. Live with your age, but be not its creation; labor for your contemporaries, but do for them what they need, and not what they praise. Without having shared their faults, share their punishment with a noble resignation, and bend under the yoke which they find it as painful to dispense with as to bear. By the constancy with which you will despise their good fortune, you will prove to them that it is not through cowardice that you submit to their sufferings. See them in thought such as they ought to be when you must act upon them; but see them as they are when you are tempted to act for them. Seek to owe their suffrage to their dignity; but to make them happy keep an account of their unworthiness: thus, on the one hand, the nobleness of your heart will kindle theirs, and, on the other, your end will not be reduced to nothingness by their unworthiness. The gravity of your principles will keep them off from you, but in play they will still endure them. Their taste is purer than their heart, and it is by their taste you must lay hold of this suspicious fugitive. In vain will you combat their maxims, in vain will you condemn their actions; but you can try your moulding hand on their leisure. Drive away caprice, frivolity, and coarseness from their pleasures, and you will banish them imperceptibly from their acts, and at length from their feelings. Everywhere that you meet them, surround them with great, noble, and ingenious forms; multiply around them the symbols of perfection, till appearance triumphs over reality, and art over nature."