Ten major cities on a major planet have been captured by alien savages and they have contaminated them with filth and disease while occupying them. The only solution is to fly over the cities bombing them to destroy them to remove the savages as well as being able to rebuild the cities. You have been chosen for this mission, so in your spacecraft you have to fly over a city and completely destroy it before moving to the next city. Challenger is a side view scrolling game where the screen scrolls from left to right constantly. With fuel very limited you can only glide over a city where you slowly descend towards the ground. As you fly, you can only move left or right and you keep dropping bombs to remove the buildings and after reaching the edge of the city it just wraps around and you fly over it again. Missiles are shot upwards by the enemy and these must be shot or avoided. Once a city has been removed you are able to land but hit a building or missile then you lose one of three lives.