Buck Rogers - Sega Megadrive

Review comments

The universe of the twenty-fifth century is a place fraught with danger for mankind. However, one man is destined to rise through the many disasters and deadly invasions to survive, prosper and lead humanity to a brave new dawn of civilisation.
Unfortunately, you are not that man. You are in fact in command of a party of understudies for the man known as Buck Rogers, performing dangerous missions in the name of freedom in this new role playing game from Electronic Arts.
You play a party of new recruits into NEO, an organisation devoted to ridding the galaxy of the last vestiges of the mega powerful RAM faction. These twisted beings are the previous tyrannical rulers of the solar system who enforced their iron-fisted law with genetic mutant warriors! Your first mission sees you repelling a minor invasion of mutant Terrines at your Earth headquarters, before advancing to the orbital command base where you are assigned to save civilisation in a number of different missions.

Staff comments

At first play, Buck Rogers doesn't exactly ooze excitement. Although the character creation is quite fun, making six different characters does get a little tedious and the first mission is particularly simplistic. The weak graphics and sound do nothing to heighten the despondent atmosphere. Get past these small hurdles however and you'll find an involving and rewarding game. There's lost to do in each of the subsequent missions, with clues being sought and a real sense of tension as time starts to run out and there's still an objective to be achieved. The combat system can be slightly annoying, although it's ten times better than any other RPG system, and you can always stick to quick combat in less-than-desperate situations. Size is another thing Buck Rogers has going for it. There are loads of assignments and they get very hard after the first couple of missions, making the battery back-up essential. Buck Rogers is definitely one for anyone after some RPG excitement or just a long-lasting, challenging game.

Like Starflight, this certainly takes a lot of getting in to. Creating your characters is a long and boring task which does not bode well for the game itself. However, give the game a chance and you can't help but get drawn into it. Okay, so the graphics look spartan to say the least, but this doesn't effect the quality of the game and the sheer atmosphere it manages to generate is quite remarkable. There are just so many missions (with all of their objectives) that you definitely get your money's worth. Even completing the first few levels takes a few hours to accomplish, and there are plenty more where that came from! I can see action-fans not getting on very well with this, but if you want a cart that offers an enjoyable, long-lasting challenge, give Buck Rogers a whirl.

Retrospective comments

I borrowed this game from a friend who had been ranting on and on about it for ages.

I had never really been into the computer-based RPG thing, but as a D&D player, I thought I'd give it a crack. This 'crack' quickly opened out into a huge chasm of gameplay which occupied my life for most of the following months.

I was used to rolling up characters, Hit points, skill levels and the like and found that being able to create MY team, really personalized the experience. The idea of flying between different planets gave a huge sense of scale that I hadn't seen before; we take large games for granted now with 5,000,000+ hours being the norm, but back then it was massive.

Combat went far and above other games, actually giving you the chance to work out some tactics and out-flank your opponents.

I bought this game off eBay a few years ago and, after opening the cartridge to change the battery, spent ANOTHER huge chunk of my life playing it. Ok the graphics aren't up to much, but they weren't much cop back then either. Buck Rogers still presents a challenge, even by today's 'Final Fantasy standards'. It was always one of my favourite games, but I can categorically say that it is now my all-time-favourite-game-of-all-time-mate.

10/10 then, 10/10 now. An absolute corker.

- Martyn 'MOB' Bowell