Rocket Ranger

About Rocket Ranger

Rocket Ranger (1988) is Cinemaware's serial-inspired adventure in which a rocket-packed US Army scientist fights Nazi zeppelins dropping IQ-lowering lunarium to change the course of the war.

Rocket Ranger in Depth

One night in a secret bunker, a US Army scientist receives artefacts teleported from a future where the Nazis won the Second World War and enslaved the world, along with a plea to change history. The Nazis' success rests on lunarium, a mineral found only on the Moon that drastically lowers the IQ of human males, dropped as bombs from zeppelins flying too high for anti-aircraft guns. With a rocket pack and a radium pistol, the player flies around the world, shoots down fighters, brawls with guards for rocket parts, raids lunarium depots for fuel and tries to win the trust of the kidnapped Dr. Barnstoff and his daughter Jane aboard a zeppelin, with digitised speech.

The goal is five rocket ship parts and 500 units of lunarium to reach the Moon and shut down the mines, where it emerges that an alien Interplanetary Union of Fascists has been helping the Nazis. A world-map strategy layer sends up to five agents to infiltrate countries, revealing key items, or organise resistance to delay the invasion of the US. Take-off is a timing minigame, and flights need exactly the right amount of fuel, chosen using a code-wheel copy protection system. Action scenes include third-person air combat against fighters, zeppelins and flak, assaults on bases from behind cover, and fistfights. Computer Gaming World said that "playing Rocket Ranger is like living the experience of the old serials".

Making Rocket Ranger

Cinemaware developed and published it in 1988, originally on the Amiga like most of its titles, drawing on Hollywood serials for its look, cut-scenes and clichés of a dashing hero and a damsel in distress. Computer Gaming World praised the Amiga version's graphics and sound but wished for saved games, given its difficulty and the chance of random events making it unwinnable. Compute! praised the MS-DOS version's EGA and Tandy graphics, and Orson Scott Card admired its variety of perspectives, interactive arcade scenes and "delightful hokum" such as the code wheel.