Reminds me of a toy I had back in the 70's where you attempted to drop bombs into cut-outs in a rotating horizontal disk by looking through an eyepiece with an attached 90deg mirror. The only controls were a lever that moved the mirror side to side and a trigger to release a bomb. It used a wind up spring motor and was entirely mechanical - I played it for hours.
Iain Sharp has built two physical Lunar Lander games, one of which is on permanent exhibition at the Under The Pier Show in Southwold, UK: https://www.underthepier.com
This brings to mind a vague memory of a physical game in the 70s where you had a bomber above a rotating plate with landscape drawn on it. With target holes maybe? I'm not sure. You had to drop little heavy bombs, probably with lead in them, and had to try to hit the targets. The bombs may have been magnetic?
Weird game, but in the same vein of mechanical simulation.
EDIT: It was called "Chutes Away". Work blocks access to any board game site so I can't verify whether there's a good article on it...
>>Released in 1977 from Gabriel, Chutes Away challenged players ages six and up to save the day as the pilot of a Coast Guard land and sea rescue plane.
The mission was to drop a set of eight plastic parachutists into various scoring cups on a revolving terrain, accumulating points and rescuing survivors along the way. To successfully drop the parachutes on target, players used the game’s built-in reduction-lens viewfinder in concert with an aircraft control lever. The lens-mounted scope provided a quasi-realistic aerial view and players initiated their drops using a Drop switch in the control panel.
The toy’s spring-wound motor allowed the terrain to move without the need for batteries, while an on/off switch controlled gameplay. The air-rescue target game took up a decent amount of table space at 21 ½ x 16 ¼ x 16-inches high.
Chutes Away’s popularity allowed Gabriel to release a Night Rescue version of the game, which added a small search light to the bottom of the plane, allowing children to attempt their daring rescue missions during the day or night.
Another Lunar Lander challenge: Land a 3oz paper bath cup on a paper plate without it or the cup tipping over, in Earth's gravity and atmosphere, multiple times.
Tools/Materials: Cup, Straws, Scissors, Masking tape, Paper plate
Reminded me of an electromechanical lunar docking arcade game (docking the Apollo Command Module to the lander on the way to the Moon). Can't find anything about it on the web, though.
