Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom
22K plays 1984 #Shooter
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, known as Zoom 909 in Japan, is a 1982 rail shooter developed and published by Sega as an arcade video game. The player controls a spaceship in a third-person perspective, adapting the three-dimensional perspective of Sega's earlier racing video game Turbo (1981) for the space shoot 'em up genre. It uses the Buck Rogers license, referencing the space battles, though Buck himself is never seen.
The arcade game debuted at the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) show, held during November 18–20, 1982, where it was considered one of the show's best games and a milestone for demonstrating the potential of 3D shoot 'em up gameplay. Ports were released for the SG-1000, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit computers, Coleco Adam, ColecoVision, MSX, Commodore 64, VIC-20, TI-99/4A, Apple II, and ZX Spectrum. The IBM PC version uses CGA graphics.
From Wikipedia's article Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Controls
This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.
Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.
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Controls
This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.
Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.
3.5 Good job
Players 75 · 15 votes
No critic scores found for this game: this is the players' rating.
Review scorecard
- Graphics 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Sound 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Control 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Fun Factor 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
Overall fallback: Players 75 · 15 votes. The same 75/100 overall rating fills missing categories using the face scale; these are not separate category scores. Player rating; no critic scores available.
What the reviews talk about
Key wordsgorgeousexcellentfun
What the critics said
They called it a "gorgeous, 3-D game that deserves the" moniker "Space Turbo" with "high-quality graphics" and "fast and furious" action.
— Video Games, 1983
Michael Blanchet for Electronic Fun with Computers & Games reviewed the Coleco Adam version, stating: "After playing Buck Rogers a scant fifty times, I noticed an ever-increasing number of on-screen glitches. I can only presume they were caused by tape wear".
— Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, 1984 (Michael Blanchet)
From the Reception section of Wikipedia's Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom article, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The words are the critics'; their full reviews are on the publishers' pages.
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