Rocket Ranger (NES)

It's up to America to save the day, and incidentally, the entire planet.

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  • System: Nintendo Entertainment System
  • Genre: Strategy, action
  • Max Players: 1
  • US Release: June 1990
  • Developer: Cineware
  • Publisher: Kemco

The year is 1990, and aliens have landed on Earth. Unfortunately, these aren’t the friendly “we’ve got the cure for cancer” kind. No, they’re the “let’s invade” type. And invade is exactly what they do. After carving out their own nation in Europe, (instead of just invading all of Earth) it’s up to America to save the day, and incidentally, the entire planet.

Your character just so happens to be the one man who can single-handedly stop the aliens. Why? Because he’s got a rocket suit. He also happens to have a laser gun, but it’s his rocket suit that the game says is his greatest invention.

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During the game, you have a number of options. You can either enter the war room, the fuel depot, the rocket lab, or take off. In the war room, you can place spies around the globe, or you can press Select to skip to the next month. You can also press Select a bunch of times to get arrested for cowardice, but this review should probably be based on more than five minutes of gameplay, so I started the game over again.

At the beginning of the game, we find out that the aliens have kidnapped America’s top rocket scientist and his beautiful daughter in a zeppelin. Apparently, their intergalactic space ship was in the shop. In any case, it’s a good thing you’ve got the rocket suit, because it’s your job to fly after the zeppelin to rescue the captured Americans.

This is when you play the first of four modes of actual gameplay. Here, you have to dodge missiles while the zeppelin gets away. It’s impossible to stop, so you really just sit back and dodge missiles. Two of the other modes of gameplay include shooting jets out of the sky while flying in your rocket suit, and getting into a fist fight with a guard when infiltrating a rocket factory. The final mode only comes if you’re actually able to make it  to the last level. Here, you run back and forth along the bottom of the screen, dodging lasers, or giants wads of phlegm, shooting at either human zombies or the evil alien overlord. Neither is nearly as exciting as it sounds.

Well, it looks like I’m nearing the end of this review, and I have yet to cover a few things. So I’ll just cram them into this final paragraph. You have to pause the game or beat it in order to hear any music. The music sucks. There would need to be more gameplay for the controls to be any worse. There’s not a whole lot you can do to avoid losing the game. Powerless the Video Game would be a more appropriate name. I had to constantly reload the saved game on my emulator in order to beat it. I really wish I hadn’t wasted the time.

  • GameCola Rates This Game: 2 - Very Bad
  • Score Breakdown

  • Fun Score: 1
  • Audio Score: 3
  • Visuals Score: 5
  • Controls Score: 3
  • Replay Value: 2
2 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 102 votes, average: 5.50 out of 10 (You need to be a registered member to rate this post.)
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About the Contributor


From 2005 to 2007

Zack Huffman is a former staff member from GameCola's early days as a monthly email newsletter.

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