Download Free Airborne Ranger C64 Manual Software
Released: 1987Genre: Shoot-’em-upFormat reviewed: Commodore 64Publisher: MicroProseDeveloper: MicroProseSubmitted by:Airborne Ranger is a different type of game to the typical run of the mill shoot ‘em up games that appeared on Commodore’s C64 machine. Yes you have a machine gun, yes you have grenades, but Airborne Ranger isn’t about shooting endless waves of enemies in return for a high score position, hell no, it doesn’t even have your standard three lives. You see, Airborne Ranger is a tactical shooter, not an arcade shooter.You start the game by choosing a Ranger from a roster of available men. Successfully completing missions allowed your soldier to gain promotions up to the rank of Colonel. These soldiers could be saved to a separate tape of disk. Each individual soldier could also be captured; captured Rangers could be rescued in subsequent missions by other Rangers in the roster.
Likewise, Rangers could also be killed too.There are several different mission types, from capturing a code book to destroying planes on an airfield. On each load, the game would change the map layout, so no two missions would ever look the same and you could also change the difficulty of each mission to your own taste.Missions begin by flying an aircraft over enemy lines, tactically dropping supply crates and at the end of the map, the player must parachute out of the aircraft.The player has several types of weapons at their disposal, a Carbine rifle, hand grenades, timed explosives, rocket launcher and a knife. With the exception of the knife, all the weapons have a set amount of ammunition, hence the reason for the supply drop offs.
Download Free Airborne Ranger C64 Manual Software Pc
As already stated, Airborne Ranger is a tactical shooter, so, shooting all on coming enemies with the rifle is ill advised, as shooting only alerts the enemies to your presence more often.As well as enemy soldiers, the player also has to contend with enemy bunkers and minefields. Bunkers could be avoided or destroyed with either timed explosives or rockets.
The player has set amount of health, but he can heal himself with a limited amount of first aid kits, however, one false move into a minefield brings instant death and an end to the mission.Graphically, Airborne Ranger isn’t too bad, the sprites are good and well animated, but the backgrounds are a bit bland, especially so on the desert type missions. Sound effects are quite good, but there isn’t much in the way of music, in fact, apart from a little jingle at the start of a mission, there is no in-game music whatsoever.Now I like shooting games, I like tactics and stealth too, so I found this very appealing back in 1987-88.
I can’t for the life of me remember how much I bought this game for at the time. I’ve seen in an old copy of Zzap64 that the tape version was a shocking £14.99 and disc version was £19.99, a very expensive game for the time. I do remember that it came in a cardboard box and had a nice manual though.
It also had copy protection in the form of correctly answering campaign badge questions before the start of a mission.Like I say, Airborne Ranger is a bit different to the average shooter of its day, its original price tag notwithstanding. In retrospect, it was a welcome change of pace to the shooters of the time, no scoreboard, no lives or extra lives made you look after your one man army a little more than you would in other shooters.