Lunar Outpost is an interesting game. It’s a weird hybrid of shooting game and strategy game. It’s been an extremely long time since I’ve played this game, so I don’t really remember the story very well. What I do remember is that in the future (natch) humans have built an outpost on the Moon. You, the driver of a Lunar Tank, must protect the Lunar Buildings from a Lunar Invasion by extra-Lunar aliens.
The aliens want to destroy the sweet buildings that have been built on the lunar surface. These buildings, it so happens, recharge your tank’s batteries, allowing you to move. You play the game by navigating the Lunar Surface, which it turns out is a large rectangle, and shooting the Lunar Invaders with your Lunar Tank-mounted Lunar Cannon. You do this by patrolling the surface and keeping tabs on invaders via the radar in the corner. You seek out the blips that are a different color than your blip, and show them the business end of your Moon Missiles.
Actually engaging the enemy takes you to a screen that looks kind of like Space Invaders with the exception that you and your adversaries could move forward and back as well as left and right. Hey, it was 1984, that was ludicrously advanced.
The goal of the game was to stave off your attackers for a specific number of Lunar Days that you pick from the outset, with the eventual goal of surviving an entire Lunar Month (a.k.a. 28 days). Alas, I was never able to survive the entire Lunar Month, but I did manage to survive about a Lunar Week before my tank’s batteries gave out when I was equidistant from two power stations. That was right before I decided to retire this game.