Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom

• Release Date: 1983
• Genre: Shooter
• Style: Vehicle Shooter
• Similar Games: Moon Sweeper (Commodore 64/128), Moonsweeper (Atari Video Computer System), Moonsweeper (ColecoVision)

Game Description

Become one of the greatest characters in science-fiction history and destroy 25th century evil in Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom.

You're Buck Rogers, on a mission to Planet Zoom, where your goal is to destroy the mother ship. You have five fighters at your disposal, and you'll earn another one for every 50,000 points you collect. There are nine levels of play, each with four rounds. The same rounds repeat in each level, but they become more deadly the higher you go.

In the first round, your goal is to pass through a certain number of electron posts. Once you've completed that task, you must battle alien fighters. Then come the space hoppers trying to destroy you. Finally, you'll do battle with the mother ship and the alien fighters which guard it. Two shots will destroy it, and then you'll start over.

A timeline on the screen shows you how much time you have left to complete the level. It changes color to warn you if there's not much time left, and if time runs out before you finish, you start over minus one ship.

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom is for one player only.

Roots & Influences

This game is based on the exploits of the character Buck Rogers, who has appeared in countless newspaper strips, adventure serials, movies, television shows and comic books since his creation in 1928. This game was first released in Arcades and is also available on the Atari 5200 and ColecoVision.

Review: Overall

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom doesn't have just one or two defects; its faults run throughout the game.

Let's start with the first round. You have to fly between a certain number of sets of "electron poles," kind of like a skier doing a slalom. Why? Who knows? There's no purpose for doing so, other than the fact that you have to fly through them in order to advance.

Next, come some alien saucers and, after a few moments, some space hoppers. The amount of flicker going on during these rounds makes it very difficult to destroy your enemies.

Once you've either avoided or destroyed those enemies it's off to outer space where more alien saucers attack. Again, there's an unbearable amount of flicker distracting you from the action (you do have to tolerate a certain amount when playing Atari 2600 games, but not this much). For some reason, the developers decided to have the saucers come at you from behind and then attack, which means you'll lose quite a few lives before you figure out the pattern.

Finally, you meet the mother ship. This should be the best part, right? Wrong. The mother ship looks like some sort of modified TIE bomber (from the Star Wars films), which also attacks you from behind. You have to knock off one half and then the other before it's toast. Every time I've played a game with some sort of mother ship, it has always been this monstrosity which sits back and blasts you with superior firepower while you try to dodge it and the little ships protecting it. This one doesn't even shoot at you. When I destroyed it the first time, I thought, "That was it?"

While you're going through each level, a bar located at the top of the screen shows you how much time you have left to complete the level. It moves so fast (making annoying sounds the whole time) that you'll find yourself accelerating to finish the level, which greatly increase your chances of crashing into something.

Overall, Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom is just too poorly designed and too difficult to play to be worth anyone's while. I found it very hard to make it past the first level without losing at least a few ships. The first level of a game should be easy and make you think it's going to be a snap, before it throws some real firepower at you.

It is also a shame that a cool science-fiction character like Buck Rogers was wasted on this game. You never see him or his supporting cast. In fact, there's nothing in this game to make you think it's anything more than a lousy shooter on which someone slapped a well-known name to sell a few more copies.

Review: Enjoyment

Way too hard in the beginning, and who thought it was a good idea to have the enemy attack you from behind?

Review: Graphics

The flicker is incredibly annoying. The only good part of the graphics is the cool-looking mountain in the distance during the planet-bound rounds.

Review: Sound

Generic fare. The noise from the timer bar gets annoying as it counts down.

Review: Replay Value

I didn't have much desire to replay this game, but I had to for review purposes. You'll be able to walk away from it.

Review: Documentation

It gives you what you need to know.