Download Apollo 18 - Mission to the Moon

Apollo space program by NASA was a giant leap for mankind. It brought men to the Moon and that is exactly what you will try to do in the game Apollo 18: Mission to the Moon. 

The game is one of the early graphical space simulations originally made for C64. It tries to recreate the flight to the Moon with all the possible difficulties. You need to take off, stay on course and land safely on the Moon. You will get to do the Moonwalk (turn off that Michael Jackson CD, you know very well I didn’t mean the dance) and return to Earth in one piece. 

The game uses 16 color EGA graphics and there was quite a lot of attention paid to details, so although the graphics will seem dated, they will not appear bad (even by today standards). True, there is not much animation. 

The main focus of the game is in timing. You will need to do the right thing at the right time. There is very little room for error (especially since the errors add up and a few mistakes might be just a bit too much in the end). 

The sounds are not impressive. They consist of nothing but a few occasional PC speaker noises. They are pointless and irritating and the major downside of this game. 

The game can be controlled either by Joystick or the Keyboard. I suggest you use the keyboard (space and enter are the two main keys to use). 

You will be able to run the game in WinXP as well (there will be colors and sounds), but it will be way to fast. I suggest you use DOSBox and slow it down to around 300 cycles (remember, the slower it runs, the easier to get the timing right). 

I first encountered Apollo 18 when I got my very own C64. Unfortunately it was one of the games I got from the previous owner (I didn’t get a new computer) and there was no manual included, so I had great difficulties figuring out what to do (the fact I was just a kid at the time didn’t help much either). Since the C64 and PC versions of the game are the same I have included the document I found online explaining the how’s and why’s of the game (as I said it’s for C64, but applies also to the PC version). I suggest you read it, otherwise you will be more or less stuck not knowing what to do.