So last month I purchased a couple of oldies from the Good Old Games. Then it hit me. Why don’t I search the Internet for all those PC DOS games I played as a kid? First up, The Rocketeer.
What’s the game like?
The Rocketeer is a PC game based on the movie of the same name. Gameplay consists of 5 separate stages, each with a different type of mini game, from 3rd person rail shooter to a side scrolling like Gradius.
When did you first play the game?
I first played this game in 1991 on my 286 PC.
Why was this game memorable?
Did you ever watch The Rocketeer? It must’ve been the dream of every little kid back then who watched the movie to own a jetpack in the day! This was also one of the prettiest games back then and also featured digitized speech.
Did you ever finish the game?
Nope. Why? Well it gets stupidly difficult near the end, employing rage inducing cheap tactics to extend the gameplay. Each stage has a code word which you can enter to skip to that particular stage in case you die, but due to a bug or oversight, the game doesn’t actually reveal what the name of the last chapter is.
And because they didn’t give the codeword for the last stage, everytime you died on it meant you had to restart the one before it.
I can’t remember why, but the game was eventually deleted by someone else and I never got to finish it. Thanks to the Internet, GameFAQs (which thankfully, someone actually has an FAQ with the final codeword) and DOSBox, I have finally conquered this rage-inducing game after 20 years.
How long is the game?
Well the game is only 5 stages, but taking into account the difficulty, you could probably beat the game in 20 minutes if you’re lucky. And if you don’t rage quit first.
Every time you fail a stage, you can’t immediately retry, instead you are taken back to the main menu where you must type in the name of the chapter/mission you are on in order to try again.
What’s your take on the game today?
For a movie tie-in, the game is actually kinda decent, even though it doesn’t really follow the movie’s plot at all. Maybe that’s a good thing? Anyway it’s kinda shocking to see how short the game actually is 20 years later, which I’m guessing most games of the same era are.
Now that I have finally finished the game though, chances are I’ll never EVER touch it again.
Where can I download the game?
You can download The Rocketeer at many of the abandonware sites on the Internet, like here at MyAbandonware.
I can’t be arsed playing. Is there a Let’s Play for it?
There is now. Here’s my run finishing the game in just under 20 minutes.
