''Rocket Ranger'' is a 1988
action-adventure game developed and published by
Cinemaware
Cinemaware was a video game developer and publisher that released several titles in the 1980s based on various film themes. The company was resurrected in 2000, before being acquired by eGames in 2005.
Cinemaware Corp. (1986–1991)
The compan ...
. The game's setting is based in the
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
era, allowing the player to control a
US Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
scientist and setting out to stop
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
from winning the war. The ''Rocket Ranger'' moniker stems from the
Rocket Pack
A jet pack, rocket belt, or rocket pack is a device worn on the back which uses jets of gas or liquid to propel the wearer through the air. The concept has been present in science fiction for almost a century and became widespread in the 1960s. ...
the player uses over the course of the game.
Like many Cinemaware games, ''Rocket Ranger'' draws its inspiration from
Hollywood, and likely
The Rocketeer
The Rocketeer is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books originally published by Pacific Comics. Created by writer/artist Dave Stevens, the character first appeared in 1982 and is an homage to the Saturday matinee serial heroes ...
comics. This title pays homage to the many 1950s
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
serials, using the look and feel of the serials, including action-packed cut-scenes and an art treatment loyal to the futuristic visions of that era. It also features the cliché elements of that era, including a dashing, courageous hero and a beautiful, voluptuous
damsel in distress in need of rescue.
Plot summary
Sitting in a top secret bunker one night puzzling over some challenging physics problems, some futuristic artifacts are amazingly teleported to the player—in the role of a US Army scientist—along with a note that says the artifacts are from the future, a future in which the Nazis won [World War II and subsequently were able to enslave the entire world. The scientists who sent the artifacts did so in a hope that the player could reverse the outcome of the war, a war Nazi Germany should have rightfully lost.
The success of the Nazis is based on their use of a mineral named lunarium, which has the ability to lower the IQ of human males drastically, thus effectively preventing military resistance when the Nazis invade. The lunarium is dropped in the form of bombs from a fleet of zeppelins flying at a higher altitude than anti-aircraft guns could possibly reach.
Using a rocket pack and a radium pistol, the player must fly around the world fighting the escalating Nazi technology. Sometimes this includes shooting down enemy fighters with the radium pistol to intercept enemy shipments. Sometimes the sequences degenerate into bareknuckle fistfights with enemy Nazi guards in order to gain rocket parts, and sometimes he has to disable the defenses of two available lunarium depots to get fuel for both his own rocket pack and the rocket ship he must assemble.
From time to time, the hero must catch up with the kidnapped scientist Dr. Barnstoff and his voluptuous daughter Jane (the love interest for the game) in a zeppelin. In these encounters the player must engage in dialogue with them (notably for the time, featuring digitized speech) to win their trust. Another part of the game takes the form of a strategy game: from a world map display the player directs five agents to search for hidden Nazi bases and they can also "organise resistance" to slow the enemy's advance towards the US.
The ultimate goal of the game is to collect five parts for a rocket ship and 500 units of lunarium to get to the Moon and close down the mines. But as it turns out, the Nazis were not the only party involved: An "Interplanetary Union of Fascists", which was formed by aliens, have struck a deal with the Germans, aiding their world conquest with their technology. In order to achieve final victory, the Rocket Ranger must battle one of these aliens.
Gameplay
The strategy game requires the player to deploy up to five agents to different nations with one of two objectives; infiltrate or organize a local resistance. The former allows the player to discover critical items to complete the game. The latter allows the player to delay the invasion of the United States.
Agents deployed in the strategy game will often give information on targets of interest or missions. These events require the player to fly there using the rocket pack via the take-off mini-game. This mini-game requires the player to time their button pushes to their character's steps in order to build enough speed for takeoff.
These are missions which require the player to engage in air combat against enemy fighters, a Zeppelin, and ground anti-aircraft guns, depending on the mission. The player flies in third-person while shooting their gun at targets ahead.
These are missions which require the player to assault a Nazi base. This involves the player destroying enemy machine gun emplacements while ducking behind cover.
These are missions which involve the player going into hand-to-hand combat with a Nazi soldier.
The Rocket Pack, a technological marvel in the setting of the game, serves as the primary mode of transportation. Players choose destinations by selecting them through a world map and by utilizing the code wheel copy protection system.
To fly from location to location, the rocket pack must be filled with a very specific amount of fuel. Too much or too little will cause the hero to overshoot or fall short of the target, and as a result plunge to his death. The player could determine the correct amount of fuel for a starting/destination pair using a code wheel, the "secret decoder wheel" included with the game. This element of the game was actually a form of copy protection. The idea was that since the wheel was included with the game and couldn't easily be duplicated, only legitimate purchasers of the game could successfully use the game.
Because the wheel needed to be used for every trip the Ranger made, it got heavy use. As a result, the wheel often fell apart (the front part of the wheel became separated from the back) after several games. The wheels could still be used, but it was more difficult when they weren't connected. Therefore, some users constructed tables that included all of the codes needed to travel from one location to another. These tables eventually made their way to
bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s and (later) the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
and used as a tool for
pirated
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
versions of the game.
Ports
Like most Cinemaware titles, this game was originally developed on the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
, one of the more capable
home computers of the era. It was later
ported
In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...
to the other platforms, scaling down the graphic and sound quality to the best those systems could deliver. The other platforms this title was ported to includes
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
,
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
,
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
and
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
. In 1989, an
Apple IIGS port was released, with a vastly superior musical soundtrack score (in terms of music synthesis quality) composed by Bob Lindstrom, with graphics comparable to the original.
Alternate media
* A different Amiga version of the game exists with invading extraterrestrial aliens as antagonists, instead of German Nazis. This is a
localised version for
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, where references to Nazis and
swastika
The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. It ...
s were not allowed in video games at the time, not even as antagonists. However, the original designs were retained, which raised logical questions about why aliens would adopt German World War II technology and be largely successful with it. This version was also the basis for the NES port, due to Nintendo's strict content restrictions at the time.
* Between 1991 and 1992,
Malibu Comics
Malibu Comics Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Malibu Graphics) was an American comic book publisher active in the late 1980s and early 1990s, best known for its Ultraverse line of superhero titles. Notable titles published by Malibu included '' ...
published a ''Rocket Ranger'' comic series closely based on the computer game. In the series, the Rocket Ranger—here named Tom Cory—comes to fight Oberst Leermeister, the German officer who oversees the lunarium operation, personally (in the game, Leermeister was more a background character, although it was possible to come face to face with him, in an interrogation sequence). Only five issues were produced, although the
cliffhanger
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhang ...
at the end of the fifth volume suggests the planned release of at least one sixth issue containing the climactic end battles.
* A
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
campaign for a remake was launched on November 13, 2014 and was fully funded on December 17. It was officially cancelled in November 2015 with refunds being offered that same month.
Reception
''
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...
'' had high praise for the game, saying "it blends action and strategy nicely and supports an entertaining game with wonderful graphics and sound". However, the lack of a save-game feature made the game frustrating to play.
''
Compute!
''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET ...
'' praised the MS-DOS version's
EGA and
Tandy graphics
Tandy Graphics Adapter (TGA, also Tandy graphics) is a computer display standard for the Tandy 1000 series of IBM PC compatibles, which has compatibility with the video subsystem of the IBM PCjr but became a standard in its own right.
PCjr grap ...
,
and
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. He is the first and (as of 2022) only person to win both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for both ...
in the magazine favorably cited the game's use of a variety of perspectives, interactive arcade sequences, and "delightful hokum" like the code wheel.
The game was voted Best 16-bit Graphics of the Year at the
Golden Joystick Awards
The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be vote ...
.
In 1996, ''Computer Gaming World'' declared ''Rocket Ranger'' the 45th-best computer game ever released,
and listed the game's
copy-protection penalty as #4 on its list of "the 15 best ways to die in computer gaming".
Reviews
*''
Jeux & Stratégie'' #55
[https://archive.org/details/jeux-et-strategie-55/page/60/mode/2up]
See also
*
Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II
A hypothetical military victory of the Axis powers over the Allies of World War II (1939–1945) is a common topic in speculative literature. Works of alternative history (fiction) and of counterfactual history (non-fiction), including stories ...
References
External links
*
*
''Rocket Ranger''at the Hall of Light
*
{{Authority control
1988 video games
Action-adventure games
Alternate history video games
Amiga games
Apple IIGS games
Atari ST games
Cinemaware games
Commodore 64 games
DOS games
FM Towns games
Games commercially released with DOSBox
Golden Joystick Award winners
Kemco games
Malibu Comics titles
Nazism in fiction
Nazis in fiction
Nintendo Entertainment System games
Superhero video games
Video games about Nazi Germany
Video games about World War II alternate histories
Video games adapted into comics
Video games developed in the United States
Single-player video games