It's the 25th century and your mission quarry as Buck Rogers is to liberate the Planet
of Zoom from the evil Source Ship. Race through heavily armed Channels, through formidable
Smasher Tunnels, and around the towering spires of the Cosmic City, avoiding alien ships
and heavy ground forces to reach the enemy Source Ship. You are the super-hero of all
time on a mission to rescue a planet. You are Buck Rogers!
Spacefaring hero Buck Rogers zoomed into the arcade world in 1982, courtesy of Sega’s
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom. Based on the famed exploits of the comic
strip/movie serial/television series star, the game put players at the helm of a
blaster-equipped spacecraft, cruising through one of the most treacherous sectors of
25th-century space.
Seen from a chase cam view, the ship faced wave after wave of enemy craft, carefully
dodging the space debris and other obstacles that cluttered the cosmos. Along with the
obligatory fire button, the control panel also housed “Speed Up” and “Slow Down” buttons,
allowing players to adjust Buck’s speed during the ongoing battle. A pure action game,
Buck Rogers continued hurling ships and other dangers in your direction until you finally
cracked.
Visually, Buck Rogers is still a stunner, the next logical step in Sega's parade of pioneering
Debuting in arcades a mere two years after the exit of the popular Buck Rogers
TV series, Sega's coin-op had no real connection with it. If anything, the enemy ships and
architecture in Planet Of Zoom are a bit more art deco, suggesting the comic book roots of
Buck Rogers. Sega later ported the game to a few home consoles, and while the player's ship
in those games seemed to hearken back to the sleek fighters of the TV series, it was more
likely a case of simplifying the arcade game's fancy rocketship.
3D games (a pantheon which includes Space Odyssey, Zaxxon and Turbo). The graphics are
fast-moving and well-rendered, amazingly colorful, and really add a unique flavor to the game.
Even though Sega's own in-house engineers did the various home console editions, they had a
very hard time approximating the game's look; most of the time they seemed to settle on just
doing the planet surface screen, which was a simple plane with approacing objects, and not
the more daunting "trench" battle.
