Go go…rocket? Rangers? What’s going on here?
Rocket Ranger is one of several “old movie genre” pastiches by Cinemaware, alongside Defender of the Crown and It Came From the Desert, among others. They also released a weird adaptation of The Three Stooges for some reason. This particular game is heavily inspired by The Rocketeer, though it’s worth noting that this came a few years before the abysmal Disney remake. It has nothing to do with Power Rangers, Rocket Raccoon, or, as it turns out, quality game design.
Set in the far off future of 1990, Rocket Ranger tasks you with traveling the world to defeat the “Leutonians.” The gameplay can differ considerably depending on where you go. Several portions of the game are a Space Harrier-esque shooter:
The above takes some getting used to – it’s not incredibly clear when you’re in an enemy’s line of fire, so you need to move very carefully (and try and get some shots of your own in at the same time). It’s not awful, I guess. Another portion is effectively a boxing mini-game, where you need to properly time punching and guarding. It’s quite simple, but rather satisfying:
Between actions, you’re treated to big walls of text explaining what the hell is even happening. Here’s one of them:
If you’re thinking it seems pretty weird at “futuristic” aliens fly around in zeppelins, you are definitely correct! You see, the original version of Rocket Ranger, which was released on Amiga and MS-DOS, pits the player against Nazis in World War II. However, due in part to Nintendo’s family friendly policies of the time, they’re a weird race of aliens instead. So we’ll have to pretend this guy on the ground is a Nazi who got beat up so badly, his face came off:
Hell yeah. To this point, you might also be thinking that a game with a bunch of varied modes and a goofy story could be pretty cool. I’m inclined to agree – it certainly could be! Here’s where the game gets rough – you have a limited amount of fuel for your rocket pack to fly around to various places. Failing a mission, or simply picking a location with nothing in it, leaves you with spent fuel and no progress. This happens a lot – even a couple of slip-ups leaves you without the resources to continue playing. Here’s a screen you’re bound to see over and over again:
Pick the wrong thing? Oops! You’re screwed, and you can either start over or play a few more pointless missions, knowing there’s no real way to climb back out. Imagine a Mega Man game that actively screwed you over if you fought the bosses in a less-than-ideal order. That’s about how Rocket Ranger feels.
This game is nothing if not ambitious – it covers numerous genres and does a decent job of it in some respects. The overall experience, though, is deeply frustrating and unsatisfying. I suspect that knowing exactly where to go, possibly through significant trial and error, makes it more enjoyable, but why bother? You could just play Space Harrier or Mega Man or Punch-Out instead and be far happier about your choice. It’s interesting, but it’s an interesting mess. I’ll leave you with this weird image of the aliens’ definitely-not-Nazi zeppelin, which encapsulates my overall confusion:
Cinemaware went out of business a year after the NES version of Rocket Ranger was released, but they made a comeback under new ownership in the early 2000s, re-hashing and remaking some of their original games for a few years. In 2014, a remake called Rocket Ranger Relaunched appeared on Kickstarter under the Cinemaware name, which raised $90,000. The game was never completed, though, which is maybe for the best.
Next week, we’re staying with the NES, and returning to a genre that has come up a bizarre number of times in this series. Hopefully this one will be better than the last one. See you then?