In-Depth Game Review: Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (Genesis)

I see London, I see France...

Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday – I never completed this game when I played the original cartridge I owned as a child, but ah, the memories! What wonders amazed me as I witnessed the foreboding opening images of an alien pilot launching a doomsday countdown over the dome of planet Earth as I turned on the game! What terrors gripped me as I was entrusted with the survival of a ragtag group of space recruits on a seemingly abandoned spaceship crawling with fang-dripping genetic horrors! This game fascinated and terrified me back then, and it was only in recent years with the wonders of emulation that I was finally able to reach its conclusion.

Good strategy/RPG games were rare on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive; though generally outclassed by the more complex and polished Japanese series Phantasy Star and Shining Force, Buck Rogers still stands on its own as a solid, thoroughly enjoyable old-school western strategy RPG that’s worth checking out.

  

Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century: Countdown to Doomsday was released on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive by Strategic Simulations, Inc. in 1991, but before then this game was originally released in 1990 for the DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64, and was immensely more complex and text-based, as computer RPGs tended to be back then. The Sega version is more of an enhanced remake than a direct port, using much more graphics-based interfaces, simplifying the character creation system, streamlining the flow of combat, adding more animations, and an actual soundtrack.

              For those who don’t know who the heck Buck Rogers is, I don’t blame you. In a nutshell, he was the star of a popular outer space swashbuckling franchise that started way back in 1928, in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories. It was later adapted into a comic strip, serial movies, TV series, radio shows… yeah, it was pretty popular. If the name sounds familiar, it’s very likely because you’ve seen that episode of Looney Tunes (that later inspired its own series) where Daffy Duck calls himself “Duck Dodgers in the 24^th and a half Century!” That cartoon is a parody of Buck Rogers, or rather the version of the franchise this game is based on, Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, where Buck is frozen and wakes up many centuries in the future.

Poster for the 1939 Serial films

Shot from the 1953 cartoon short, directed by Chuck Jones

                So with that bit of backstory out of the way, let’s have some more! Don’t worry, it’s simple – in this game, you form a party of eager new recruits to fight for the cause of NEO, the New Earth Organization, which mostly consists of battling the evil forces of RAM (the Russo-American Mercantile) and rebuilding the ruined Earth that has only recently been freed from RAM’s iron clutches. There’s a whole history leading up to this point in the instruction manual, complete with lovely pen-and-ink illustrations throughout, but all you really need to know is that there are bad people doing bad things and you have to stop them. Oh, and Buck Rogers is around here somewhere. Yay! 

OMG IT'S... Wait, who are you again?

Hide where, exactly?

In true Dungeons and Dragons fashion, before you actually start your adventure you have to create your team of intrepid adventurers. You must choose their race, class, and gender, then roll some dice (or click a button in this case) to randomly determine their statistics. Then you have to customize one of the most interesting mechanics of your characters – Skills. Depending on your party’s classes and skills, you can approach some situations in different ways. For example, sometimes when encountering enemies, you can choose to fight them like usual, convince them that you’re allies with a charismatic character, or sneak past them with the help of a stealthy character. There are many times where you’ll need a good programmer to reprogram a device or a clever hacker to shut off a security system. This opens up quite a bit of replay value, since you can experiment with different class/skill setups to progress through the game a little differently each time. Just keep in mind that, like a table-top RPG, almost everything in this game operates on dice rolls, or random numbers. Even if you meet skill level requirements, options like hiding or bluffing are not 100% guaranteed to work, so save often!

Decisions, decisions...

Now, let’s dig a little deeper into the character building system.

There are three races – Humans, Desert Runners, and Tinkers – and four classes – Warrior, Rocket Jock, Rogue, and Medic. Your statistics are Strength (increases damage dealt), Dexterity (increases evasion and proficiency with ranged weapons and piloting rocket ships), Constitution (increases health), Charisma (improves persuasiveness and leadership), and Tech (short for technical know-how, improves skills dealing with machinery, like Jury Rigging).

Desert Runners are ferocious animal-people who were bioengineered to survive and colonize the harsh Martian environment. Their best stats are Strength and Constitution, and they can only be Warriors and Rocket Jocks. Tinkers are small creepy grey people bioengineered from humans and small primates who can work in cramped places and are good with tools. Their best stats are Dexterity and Tech, but they can only be Medics. Humans... are just regular ol’ humans, untouched by any crazy genetic engineering. All four classes are available to them, and their stats are pretty balanced, save for a one-point bonus to Constitution and Tech. They’re the only race that can be Rogues.

The classes are fairly self-explanatory; Warriors are strong and resilient, ideal for sending out on the front lines of battle, and in ground combat their skills in Tactics and Leadership provide first turn advantages and control over friendly NPCs, respectively. Rocket Jocks are decent in combat, but specialize in piloting and repairing space vehicles during space combat with their skill, Pilot/Jury Rig. Rogues are somewhat weak, but live by their wit and cunning, using their Bypass Security skill to get your team out of the stickiest situations. Medics are the most flimsy but the most essential, able to heal and revive party members after combat with their Treat Wounds skill.

The character statistic screen

Compared to most RPGs there’s not a terrible amount of variety here. If you want the best stats for your appropriate classes, your Warriors will almost always be Desert Runners, your Medics will almost always be Tinkers, and your Rocket Jocks will almost always be Humans. However, you could change things up a bit and make your Rocket Jocks into Desert Runners or Medics into Humans to increase their survivability in combat, or make your Warriors into Humans to make them a bit better with ranged weapons, or even roll through the game with an all-Human party.

It's time to play Guess What Other RPGs I've Played!

Now back to those skills I mentioned earlier. For any good space adventure, you’re going to need a team with various specialties. At character creation and after each level-up, you can invest a set number of skill points into one class-specific skill and 10 different general skills, which include things like Perception, First Aid, Fast Talk, and Stealth. Some skills are so helpful they’re pretty much essential, like First Aid and Zero-Gravity Maneuvering; some skills are only useful in certain situations, but still helpful, like Programming and Fast Talk; but some skills are nearly useless, like Library Search and Climbing. Searching libraries only grants random trivia and tiny amounts of experience, and I can only remember one or two times where someone had to be an exceptional climber. This area could have used a bit more balancing, but each skill still has their uses, and as I said before, it adds some good replay value to the game.

The skill selection screen

Before I forget, Warriors get some special treatment in the skills department. Starting at level 1, every other level they receive a skill point to invest in one of 6 weapon specialties. This gives them a significant boost in damage and accuracy with the weapon they specialize in. With only about 8 levels to grow through in the game (unless you’re willing to grind to level 10), you only get about 4 weapon skill points, so it’s wise to make your Warriors specialize in one weapon each. I’ll get into the weapons themselves later.

Now we come to the meat and potatoes of the game, if you will – exploration and combat.

This is a grid-based game mostly – in towns, buildings, space stations, and “dungeon” areas, you control an avatar representing your party in a semi-isometric environment, with a fancy-looking HUD that displays an animated image representing where you are or who you’re talking to. Events occur when you walk onto a specific square of the map. In combat, your party members and enemy party members walk around and attack on a flat grid inside a larger version of the dungeon mode map, with each character taking up one square (or two squares if it’s a particularly large, nasty-looking enemy). In overworld areas, everything is top-down and you can freely move around in whatever vehicle you’re using. These maps are an improvement over the limited first-person-view-in-a-tiny-box interface used in the original computer versions of the game.

Back to combat – this is a role-playing strategy game, so fights consist of everyone taking turns, moving a set number of spaces, then attacking. Characters with the Tactics skill determine which team goes first. As usual, attacking enemies from the side or back greatly increases your chance to hit them. Ranged weapons, unlike the usual, have a better chance to hit at short range rather than medium or long range. Also, sometimes if one character gets within attack range of another character while moving around, the other character can lash out for a free hit – be especially careful of this around melee enemies. There are also things like terrain and zero-gravity that reduces the number of spaces you can move, and large objects, like trees or rocks, that provide cover from enemy fire. Oh, a note about side/rear attacks – an enemy’s facing is only “set” after someone tries to attack them or they attack someone else. Take advantage of these things!

Pirates vs. Ninjas? Forget that, we got Giant Acid Frogs vs. Ninjas!

If one of your characters loses all their health, they become unconscious – a character with points in the First Aid skill can try to revive them. But beware! If someone low on health takes more than enough damage required to render them unconscious, they can die permanently and be beyond healing.

On to weapons - There’s a small, but decent variety of weapons in this game. Instead of getting a shiny new weapon to replace a weaker one, you get stronger versions of said weapons, with the exception of grenades. “Levels” of weapons are indicated by the color around their picture and which planet they’re from, like an appropriately red-colored “Martian Needle Gun”.

There are only two melee weapons in the game: Cutlasses and Mono Swords. Mono Swords are flat out better, and should mostly be handled by Warriors since swords benefit from their high Strength stat. A quick tidbit about swords – sometimes when attacking an enemy from behind, a sword-wielding character can perform a “Backstab”, which does HUGE damage with 100% accuracy! You’ll get better chances for it if your character has points in the Stealth skill.

The other 4 main weapons (which Warriors can also specialize in, remember) are Laser Pistols, Needle Guns, Rocket Pistols, and Heat Guns. Lasers have good power and long range, but are thwarted by Mist Grenades and curved reflective surfaces, like those of robots. Rocket pistols have shorter range but more power, shooting off “smart bullets” that home in on enemies. However, the chaff from Chaff Grenades makes them useless (along with any other explosive), and they can be diverted by EMC signals emitted from robots and enemy equipment. Needle guns have good accuracy and range, and work on anything, but do little damage. Heat Guns deal heavy damage and WOULD work on anything if they didn’t have terrible range and accuracy. If you don’t feel like swapping weapons for different situations, ideally, you would equip and specialize your Warriors with Mono Swords and give Needle Guns to everyone else, but where’s the fun in that? ;)

Dazzle Grenades in action

To elaborate more on grenades, they’re what you would expect – equip them to your character’s main hand and you can throw them to affect a highlighted area within your range (there are Grenade Launcher items that help you launch them much further – get them!). Mist and Chaff grenades coat the highlighted area in mist or chaff, respectively. There are also Dazzle Grenades, which can blind anyone caught in it, and Stun Grenades, which can stun people for a few rounds. A blinded or stunned enemy not only has trouble attacking but is more vulnerable as well. Don’t worry, there are damage-dealing Explosive Grenades in the game, but they’re kind of hard to come by and aren’t sold by shops, so don’t waste any if you find some. Poke around in as many rooms and side areas as you can – you might even find a nasty little Rocket Launcher, or if you’re really lucky, the elusive, earth-shattering Plasma Thrower!

Packin' heat!

Besides weapons, there’s also armor and accessories you can equip in the appropriate slots on your characters. The selection is disappointingly small though – there are only 3 armor slots per character, Head, Body, and Belt. There’s only a couple of body armors available, and each new one you encounter is almost always better than what your team’s wearing at the time. In fact, if you know where to go and have enough money, you can buy the best armor in the game pretty early. For the Head and Belt slots, only one item is available for each slot – Protective Goggles, which protect you from Dazzle Grenades, and ECM Packages, which divert rocket pistol rounds. Both items can be found and purchased fairly early in the game.

And finally we come to space combat, one of the flat-out coolest parts of the game. After the first main mission, you’ll have your very own spaceship and have free reign to fly wherever you want until you feel like moving on with the main story. But beware – you always have a random chance of encountering an enemy spacecraft. You could try to trick them into thinking that you’re on their side or you’re too tough to tango with, but eventually you’ll have to fight. Now remember – this is Buck Rogers, the grand daddy of classic sci-fi, so not only do spaceships look fantastically retro, but space battles are considerably more exciting than some modern sci-fi games (look, they’re slowly floating closer to each other, how exciting!). In fact, these fights play out more like pirate ship battles than anything else.

The objective of space combat is to either completely destroy the enemy ship or, if you want a lot more experience, money, and loot, disable the enemy ship’s weapons and mobility, board their ship, then locate and secure the bridge and engineering sections, all while fighting off its crew members. And you have to be quick; the enemy crew will eventually wise up to your antics and try to take over your ship while you’re away. If they succeed, it’s game over.

Ship-to-ship combat plays out a lot like ground combat: each round begins with a dice roll for which ship will go first, determined by the opposing Rocket Jocks’ Pilot skill and how damaged their Controls are. You’ll cycle through each of your party members, who can fire one of the ship’s weapons, reload a weapon that’s out of ammo, or end their turn. If they are a Medic and someone has taken damage (which happens sometimes), they can use First Aid to heal them up. Rocket Jocks get their time to shine here: they get the Pilot command, which opens up a whole new set of actions – Close and Withdraw will move your ship closer to or further from the enemy ship, respectively. When you get close enough, you can Board the enemy ship if certain conditions are met, or you can Ram the enemy ship to deal heavy damage to its Hull. It doesn’t always work though, and if it connects, your ship will sustain damage as well.

Each ship has 4 sections to keep track of – the Hull, the Weapons, the Controls, and the Engines. Each section has its own life bar, and if that falls to zero then that section is out of commission. If you want to completely destroy the enemy ship, the fastest way is to destroy the hull, the main body of the ship – if that goes out, the whole ship goes kablooey. Take out the Weapons and either the Engines or Controls and the enemy ship will be ripe for boarding, as mentioned before.

There are 3 different weapons your ship will use – Lasers, Missiles, and the K-Cannon. Lasers have high accuracy and never run out of ammo, but do weak damage. Missiles have lower accuracy and must be reloaded after several shots, but dish out some good damage. The K-Cannon has the lowest accuracy but has plenty of ammo and hits like a space truck. You’ll have to balance the accuracy of your weapons to the inherent chance-to-hit for each section of the enemy ship (which changes with the distance between the ships): the Hull, obviously the largest part of the ship, is the easiest to hit. Next are the Engines on the back of the ship, then the Weapons near the front, and lastly the tiny hard-to-hit area where the Controls are located. If you want to avoid frustration, I’d recommend using lasers on the controls AND the weapons (since you take out one weapon at a time regardless of damage dealt), then use missiles on everything else, unless you’re close to the enemy ship and are feeling lucky with the K-Cannon.

Phew! I think I’ve covered just about everything you need to know about Buck Rogers, so I’ll stop before this gets ridiculously long. It really is an enjoyable old-school adventure all the way through – you’ll be creeping through a derelict space ship filled with killer mutants, sneaking into an asteroid mining base, held prisoner by the leader of the space pirates, leading a band of rebel desert runners on Mars, negotiating with Venusian Lowlanders, and eventually putting an end to a nefarious plot to destroy the Earth. You’ll fight alongside the legendary Buck Rogers for a while, and meet some of his friends who’ll aid you on your mission. There are even some optional side areas you can explore for extra goodies and story tidbits.

Hey! It's... that one chick...uh...

If you’re a fan of western RPGs or strategy games, I’d definitely recommend giving this game a whirl. The customizability of your party and the different ways you can approach situations in and out of battle garners at least 2 to 3 playthroughs, and several more if you really want to experiment with the game. It’s probably one of the most overlooked strategy/RPGs on the Genesis due to the looming shadow of other excellent Genesis games like Shining Force and Phantasy Star II, but I say it’s still a gem worth discovering.

For great justice!

Victory!