Ludography
Rocket Ranger cover

1988 · Cinemaware · Action-adventure · Adventure

Rocket Ranger

Nintendo console exclusive

A Master Race from Outer Space Threatens the Free World! With the zapping of ray guns and the cries of Zombie Women, Rocket Ranger brings all the action, romance, thrills, and spills of the Saturday morning serial! The action begins with an urgent message from the future. .

Released
1988
Platforms
AmigaApple IIGSAtari STAtari ST/STECommodore 64Commodore C64/128/MAXFM TownsMS-DOSNES
Genres
Action-adventureAdventureFightingPlatformerShooterStrategy
Developers
Cinemaware
Publishers
Cinemaware
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Third personSide view
Themes
ActionFantasyHistorical
Country
United States
Languages
English

About

Rocket Ranger is a 1988 action-adventure game developed and published by Cinemaware. The game's setting is based in the World War II era, allowing the player to control a US Army scientist and setting out to stop Nazi Germany from winning the war. The Rocket Ranger moniker stems from the rocket pack the player uses over the course of the game.

Like many Cinemaware games, Rocket Ranger draws its inspiration from Hollywood, and likely The Rocketeer comics. This title pays homage to the many 1950s science fiction 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.

Keywords

  • modern warfare
  • shoot 'em up
  • 1950s
  • superhero
  • modern military
  • damsel in distress
  • cheat code
  • terrorists
  • villain
  • censored version
  • physical copy protection

Media

Rocket Ranger screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

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.

Story

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 only exists on Earth's moon and 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.

Reception

Computer Gaming World stated that "Playing Rocket Ranger is like living the experience of the old serials". The magazine praised the Amiga version's graphics and sound, but wished for a save-game feature because of its high difficulty and possibility of the game becoming unwinnable from random events. Compute! praised the MS-DOS version's EGA and Tandy graphics, and Orson Scott Card 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. In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Rocket Ranger the 45th-best computer game ever released,

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Amiga31 December 1988North America
Atari ST/STE31 December 1988North America
Commodore C64/128/MAX31 December 1988North America
MS-DOS31 December 1988North America
NES31 December 1988North America · Brazil 1 February 1996
Apple IIGS31 December 1989North America
FM Towns1 May 1990Japan

Editions and related releases

Included in
Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991

Games like this

Collections5 collections

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.