Troopa Truck

The Good
Troopa Truck is a good game from Rabbit, which Commodore User (#09, June ‘84) compared to Skramble. I disagree with CU; if the reviewer actually played the game, they would have realized you don’t fly over a surface while shooting airborne enemies and dropping bombs on fuel deposits. MobyUser piltdown_man was right when he said that it is a clone of Moon Patrol. You skim across a moon surface shooting at enemies above and in front of you while jumping over holes.

The animations are all there. I find it amusing how fast the buggy’s wheels turn. The only thing missing from this clone are the checkpoints. Instead, you advance a level every ten seconds. The more you advance, the more difficult it becomes. At level sixteen, for instance, you come face to face with a tank about your size, and it does not last five seconds without firing its projectile at you if you are not quick enough.

Rabbit has implemented the parallax scrolling rather well; the four layers of mountains move at different speeds, creating the illusion of moving across a surface. The background music is well composed, and this can be toggled on and off with the [F1] key. When you run out of lives, you can continue where you left off, although you are restricted to how many times you can do this.

The Bad
Even if you have music on during the game, it cuts off during a period of time, and you have to re-enable it with [F1]. The title screen is displayed after you run out of lives.

The Bottom Line
Troopa Truck is a ride-the-buggy-across-a-moon-surface game that attempts to imitate Moon Patrol, and does it rather well. The game boasts excellent parallax and well composed background music that can be turned on and off. Unlike other clones of the game, Rabbit actually pulled this one off.