Previous Next

Marketed as the thinking man's shoot-'em-up, Airborne Ranger has you blasting your way through twelve difficult and dangerous missions, and you'll need brains as well as brawn if you're to survive!

You can choose which mission to attempt, or if you're really butch you can attempt all twelve in succession, winning medals and promotions en route. Each mission presents its own challenge, but all begin with a short sub-game where you parachute into enemy territory. Careful where you land - parachuting is a dangerous pastime.

The first task you face is getting through the protection system - it's horrific. Match the badly digitised medal ribbon to its badly drawn inlay counterpart, and be careful - one mistake and it's re-load city!

Having beaten the protection, you must then contend with the multi-load. Load, choose your mission, load, play the sub-game, load again, then ask yourself 'is it really worth it?'. With twelve missions laid end to end on one side of the tape, you know you're sure to be in for a hard time, but it's made far worse than it needs to be by the on-screen prompts - they haven't been changed from the original release! When asked to 'Insert tape 2 side A' I felt like throwing the only tape I had out of the window! Also, because the instructions for the airdrop are below par, you could find yourself ploughing through it all only to be told you died on landing!

When you eventually get to play the game proper you'll find a rather groovy strategy shoot-'em-up, but by then you'll be too peed off to care. Scoring 73% in Issue 33, I can only assume they were reviewing the disk version - on tape this is a disaster!