Sky Ranger (1984)

Name:Sky Ranger
Number:260
Year:1984
Publisher:Microsphere Computer Services
Developer:Microsphere Computer Services
Genre:Flight Simulation
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour 50 minutes
Won:No (115W/87L)

I occasionally pop in some of these titles I've never played before but don't actually cover it the week I first play it. The reasons are numerous, sometimes they're for games I don't feel like playing that week, sometimes I'm in a cutting mood, others I'm just looking for inspiration to strike. Sky Ranger has been the unfortunate victim of this for a good chunk of the game year, and as there are five other games in 1984 besides this one, it's time to remedy this.

The backstory is that The Watchers, robots created to enforce the law, have gone mad and it's your objective, as a Sky Ranger, to take them out. Travel along the city and use your radar to track down and shoot them as you. Remember, it's an action strategy game, because your skill as a pilot and split second decisions are important.

The controls aren't the strangest I've ever seen, but they are weird. There are a lot of buttons which do a lot of things in ways that don't make any logical sense. For instance, the arrow keys move you to the left. I'm not saying that just the left arrow key moves you to the left, the entire stack does. For simplicity's sake, I settled on speed controls, Q & A, increase and decrease respectively. V & B turn, left and right. O and L go up and down. 0 shoots. It's not that unusual for a Speccy title, but good god, having so many duplicate buttons annoys the hell of out me. If you press buttons you see on your HUD you're very likely to just crash and die.

I struggled for a while with these controls before I realized something I've been mentally skipping over at the start. Rebind controls. It's a bit janky to change, but once it's changed, it works flawlessly and so does the helicopter. Perhaps too flawlessly, making it less like a copter and more like a hovercraft with a five minute fuel supply. You can painlessly cruise over a building at the height of your ability to go higher as opposed to scraping it with your landing gear.

The HUD is mostly straight-forward. Fuel is fuel and rapidly depletes as you move forward. If you hover in place, it stays where it is. The ceiling refers to the ceiling of the fog, which throughout the day goes up and down. Altitude is how high you're up. The heading is your typical compass, and the radar shows the Watchers in your area. Speed is depicted in knots, which I actually didn't know was used for airplanes, shows how many games have used something else instead. Low ammo flashes if somehow, you start running out of ammo. The little copters are lives and the letters below your score refer to refueling stations. If one is blacked out, that means you can't use it.
 

These refueling stations are not just the only way you can continue a level, they're also the only actual features in what is otherwise an endless series of cross streets and skyscrapers. There's a wall at certain points, but otherwise, there's little but your own sense of space to know where you are. Much like TerraHawks, it runs smoothly and at a reasonable pace.

Watchers are your enemy, and they take the form of floating orbs. They wander the streets, sometimes going up or down, and patiently wait to be shot. They don't do anything to you, not unless you crash into them. Shooting them is easy, wait until your GUI starts flashing, and shoot. So, where's the problem?

As I alluded to, fuel runs out quite quickly. To the point it comes off less as a measure of anything approaching realism and more artificially extending the game. It works oddly too. Float in place and you can do so indefinitely, something you can exploit against Watchers near you. Going up and down seems to do nothing, it's moving forward which costs you. I'm not sure if going faster drains it faster or if it's just a distance thing, but this thing runs down incredibly quickly. Five minutes is not an exaggeration, that's what you can expect.
 

Time means nothing, since night falls and dawn breaks independently of your fuel. That's right, there's a day and night cycle. It doesn't mean anything, it just turns into night after a set period of time, then day after another period. What actually does affect the game is that there's fog. Throughout the day, it goes down to the ground, then back up to the sky and repeats. If you're above the fog, you can't see anything. This is more a time waster than a serious bottleneck, since it's a sign you need to slow down and wait for things to fix itself.

The second interesting thing the game does is include damage to your windshield. Crash, and a massive crack appears along the screen. Land too quickly, and so does another. Hitting a Watcher causes a nice little crack. It certainly is a cool effect, but as you might be able to gather, it quickly turns into something annoying. As long as you aren't running out of fuel, this isn't a problem, just fly carefully.

Winning a level is more difficult than you'd think considering how simple this plays. Since enemies are randomly placed, it seems logical that you only go as long as you can stomach. But, the game has level codes, so what gives? The answer is that you have to take out a set number of enemies before you advance to the next level, sixteen to be precise. Losing a chopper results in that counter resetting.

What changes? That's a good question. Because the only thing I can detect that's changed is now the Watchers give me 200 points. They don't start attacking me, the layout hasn't changed, and things don't feel anymore difficult. The total number of Watchers I need to take out is still sixteen. Once I'm on level 3 the score increases to 300 a kill. Out of curiosity, I decide to check level 8, since there are thankfully codes for the game online. They just start whizzing around, which to a certain degree does make the game harder, but also makes camping a much more valid strategy.

I don't really see a point, since we're retreading ground that didn't need to be gone over again. It's a shame, because this is a well-constructed game, it just needed something more than being a target hunting game.

Weapons:
This is the most pathetic laser I've seen. Fire, the screen lights up and your target disappears. It is a gun in the most abstract sense. 0

Enemies:
Basically, moving targets. 0

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
It'd be wrong to say I'm in love with the city, but something about it feels oddly compelling. Not on the gameplay level, but in just flying around it. Most games with cities aren't just endless skyscrapers and that's a bit novel to fly around in. 2

Player Agency:
Once you rebind it, it works almost flawlessly in an arcade sense. Almost, there's no pressing two buttons at once, which is just something I had to work around. On the other hand, no pause button that I could tell. 5

Interactivity:
The cracks on the windshield add a little to the experience, as annoying as they are. 1

Atmosphere:
Despite not being much of a game, there was an incredible amount of effort into creating this strange little world...shame that the only way you could properly immerse yourself in it is if you turned the sound off. 2

Graphics:
Simple wireframes and a few neat drawings. 2

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Very annoying, like the PC Speaker of my youth. There are various mutilated versions of classical songs, a gunshot that only happens when you shoot an enemy, and the constant sound of propellers. 1

That's 13, somehow.

Reviews are mixed, but nobody is really bringing up anything I didn't. The harsher ones have trouble playing this, which is absolutely fair if you don't rebind the controls. Another says that there's not much content, which...yeah.

I skipped over a game called Gumshoe, it was a strange little private detective side-scrolling shooter which felt like it might have something interesting worth talking about, but didn't come across in gameplay. Otherwise, 1984 has six games, which was going to be five except I finally got around to checking Quest of the Space Beagle's predecessor. Next time will be Spear of Destiny, finally.