Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 17: Gold Box - Buck Rogers XXVc: Countdown to Doomsday (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1990

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Systems:

DOS, C64, Amiga, Mega Drive

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Buck Rogers XXVc: Countdown to Doomsday! A Science Fiction Role-Playing Computer Game Vol. I. Not to be confused with Buck Rogers XXX, that would be... something else.

I actually played this once already, 14 years back. Though the PC version scared me off, so I played the friendly Genesis/Mega Drive version instead, with its icons and isometric levels. I don't recall much about it now, but there's one thing I'm sure of: it's got nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons' medieval multiverse of knights and clerics whatsoever. It didn't even come in a gold box.

It does run on the Gold Box engine though. Plus it's by D&D video game developer SSI and it was an adaptation of the Buck Rogers XXVc tabletop game from D&D publisher TSR. I think that makes it worth a look.

Hang on a moment, the more I stare at that logo the weirder it seems. Half the letters have impossible sharp corners, you can't do a T or a D that way, and the letters W and M are straight up impossible to reproduce on a 7-segment display. Also the T has a single pixel of red missing and it's bothering me.

Alright, now I'll be able to sleep tonight. Doesn't really look as good though.

Anyway, it seems a bit strange to build a new tabletop RPG around a character people mostly knew from a campy TV show from the late '70s, but there was actually a good reason why TSR were trying to resurrect the brand: they were being run at the time by Lorraine Williams, whose family owned the Buck Rogers IP. If you've got a classic sci-fi brand and a tabletop RPG company, it's not the worst idea to try combining the two. And it apparently sold an okay number of copies. Not great, but enough to justify the sequel that came out a couple of years later.

Okay I'm going to play the game for a while and see if I can get further than I did in the Mega Drive game. I remember walking around a damaged spaceship, though I can't recall if I managed to walk back off again.

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I've already played a few Gold Box games, so I know the procedure. First thing I always have to do is spend half an hour looking up how to build a decent party and planning my six characters.

Countdown to Doomsday's thrown me a curveball though, as instead I've spent half an hour messing around with different versions of DOSBox and Gold Box Companion trying to make the "ERROR: Could not solve base address. 1st ID not found!" message go away. I've never needed to do this before, as I've been using the Steam versions of the games and they have it already set up for you.

I eventually figured out that all I needed to do was add the line "config -securemode" to the [autoexec] section of DOSBox's config file. I could've just tried playing the game without Gold Box Companion... but no, I'm not doing that. Even if I was able to find the joy in drawing maps on graph paper, I'd still miss having it during the battles.

Okay, now that the game's working I need to put together a team. Trouble is, all the knowledge I've been accumulating from the previous Gold Box games is useless here. I know what elves and dwarves are good at, but what's a Tinker and a Desert Runner?

I can at least assume that 'warrior', 'medic' and 'rogue' are basically 'fighter', 'cleric' and 'thief'. From what I can tell there's no multiclassing or dual-classing here, these five classes are all I get, so with six characters to make I may as well pick one of each. There's no choice of alignment either, as we're all lawful good space heroes here.

I'm not surprised that I don't get to play as Buck Rogers himself, but it is a little surprising maybe that all of my characters seem to be from this time period. Buck Rogers is basically an isekai story about the protagonist being stuck in a strange world, but it won't be strange to any of these guys.

This character sheet is very similar to the other Gold Box games, though there are some differences. All the D&D ability scores are here, but they've added a new one, TCH (probably 'tech'). And there are career skills now, like in Wasteland (and Fallout).

The only choices you get on this screen are to reroll your stats and enter a name, but there's no point rolling over and over to get the ideal set of scores as you can just modify them afterwards. And I am totally going to do that, though I'll only be raising strength, dexterity and constitution to absurd levels (because I don't want to lose fights, I want to win them, and then continue doing things). 

They've gotten rid of the (00) percentage on strength and there are no penalties for picking a female character any more, so you can go nuts and have a whole team of muscular warrior women. Though different races have different maximum scores and it seems like Desert Runners are the best at most things.

The different ports of the game have different coloured frames for some reason. But whatever version you play, character creation is basically the same...

Mega Drive

...except for the Mega Drive version, which streamlines the process and features some artwork. No portraits though, the blonde dude just means 'Terran'.

You can make all your choices from the same screen, though half the races have disappeared along with the 'engineer' class, and the 'intelligence' and 'wisdom' scores. And this time you really have to rely on that reroll button to get those bar graphs looking healthy, as there's no way to manually edit your stats.

The Mega Drive game got such a big overhaul that it even has a new intro.

Mega Drive

I can't joke about half the text being backwards from his point of view because I did that the last time I wrote about it.

Though if I'm trying to stop the countdown to doomsday, then it's a bit weird to show me running out of time in the intro. And isn't destroying the Earth more of a Flash Gordon thing than a Buck Rogers thing? Actually, I don't really know anything about either of them, as they're a bit before my time. I'm more of a John Crichton fan. Or Duck Dodgers.

I've have seen a bit of the Buck Rogers TV series, but only enough to know that the robot is annoying. Fortunately I don't think any prior knowledge would do me much good anyway, as this is set in the XXVc universe, which is its own thing made up for the tabletop game. 

Man, this game is giving me a lot of skills to pick from. Hang, there's more than one page of them. There's lots of pages of them! What the hell, game? How the hell is anyone supposed to make good choices here?

I have no bloody clue which skills would be nice to have and which I really need to have, so I'm going to check a walkthrough for help. I do at least realise that it's a waste of points to make everyone experts in 'astronomy', when one person can handle that while someone else is a master of 'disguise', or whatever. Hang on, how is 'disguise' on the 'intelligence skills' page?

Those bonus points are coming from their ability scores, so it it makes sense to give my high intelligence characters skills like 'mathematics' or 'programming', while a high charisma character could have 'acting'. And obviously the rocket jock should get all the skills like 'drive jetcar' and 'pilot fixed wing craft', because they're the pilot.

Oh, it turns out those skills are absolutely useless in this game and the manual actually tells you this. They're just there in case they become useful in the sequel and you want to carry your character over.

Meanwhile, on the Mega Drive:

Mega Drive

Distributing skill points goes a lot quicker when there are only 10 skills, and 8 points to share between them.

I don't know if this is an improvement though. A video game's faithfulness to the tabletop RPG it's based on is usually a selling point, even if they were both released at about the same time. Plus I like the idea of a character's unusual skills coming into play at unexpected times. 

I just think it's weird to have a character spending points continually levelling up singing or etiquette just in case there's ever a point to it. They could've been something you choose once during character creation to add a bit more dimension to your person.

Oh, I can just choose the character sprite from a set of pre-made icons this time? I don't have to customise a generic icon by cycling through colours for the legs and arms and hair etc? This is my favourite thing about the game so far!

The downside is that there's no way to change things like skin tone and hair at all, but I like the bold fluorescent colours, they're very early '90s. Also the weapons are just for show. I could pick someone who's holding a rocket launcher in their art, but it'll likely be a long time before I find one.

All the ports have their own redrawn set of icons, with the Mega Drive having way fewer of them. It makes up for it though, because the Mega Drive characters can face up and down.

MISSION ONE

There's a lot of backstory about the Buck Rogers XXVc setting in the manual if you want it, but Carlton Turabian promises to keep the introduction brief.

My team is a bunch of new recruits who've heard of the bravery of Buck Rogers and have decided to sign up with the NEO (New Earth Organization) to fight the RAM (Russo-American Mercantile) menace. They've been brought to the Chicagorg spaceport for orientation. I'm pretty sure 'Chicagorg' is supposed to be read as Chicago-org, but to me it'll always be Chica-gorg.

After the lecture, the game automatically brought my characters outside to their shuttle. They're going to be assigned to NEO's secret Salvation Station so they can get started on some salvage and patrol missions. No combat for a while, they'll need to prove themselves first.

Suddenly retro-style rocketships start raining sci-fi fire onto the spaceport! Control towers collapse in balls of crimson and sometimes green flame. People panic and scatter. I actually forgot this was going to happen, so this picture is a bit of a surprise to me. 

The colours are especially surprising, because at first glance this looks it was drawn for the distinctive palette of EGA hardware, but it's not. The art was definitely made for VGA, which has 256 simultaneous colours and thousands to pick from.

It took me a minute to figure this mystery out, but I think I've solved it.

They drew the picture for EGA first and then redrew it for VGA, keeping the same colours but blending them a little better. With the extra shades they didn't need all that dithering in the background any more.

The Amiga and Mega Drive can't put as many colours on screen, but they have managed to give the explosions a more natural hue. I think the C64 game has the nicest text though.

Alright, here's what the actual game looks like. It's basically the same as all the other Gold Box games, except this particular location doesn't seem to have any walls. Usually I'm in a room or in a street and it's pretty clear where I can go, but here it's just emptiness all the way to the skyline.

The row of commands is similar to the D&D games, but with two fairly important changes: the 'Cast' command has been removed as there's no magic, and the 'Encamp' command is gone because there's no resting.

I took a step forward and a dying man whispered a message. Though I have to take the game's word for that, as no one appeared on the screen. Not in the DOS version anyway.

Mega Drive

The Mega Drive port is viewed from a completely different perspective and it actually does have other characters visible on screen. Though that image on the right is just a picture.

It reminds me of those old handheld ports where everything had to be remade in 2D because the hardware couldn't handle 3D. Except in this case the original systems couldn't handle 3D either, so this is actually doing a better job of depicting the world. 

Not that the Mega Drive was a basic system compared to the others. It was on the Amiga's level and kicked the ass of the C64 and EGA PCs.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to go find those missile controls now, or if the guy was just saying a typical 'they caught us by surprise' line. I suppose it doesn't matter as I wouldn't know where to find them anyway. 

We've been attacked by Terrines, who are like a cross between a bat and a Cylon. Are these guys working for RAM? I'm sure it says somewhere in the manual but I don't feel like reading it cover to cover.

Fortunately I don't have to fight them alone as NEO forces have rushed to my aid! Also I started off with equipment for a change, so I don't have to go find a weapon shop first.

See, this is why I need Gold Box Companion! It puts a map on the side of the DOSBox window showing me where everyone is and how they're doing. It's not secret information, the game does tell me everyone's hit points, but this lets me see it at glance.

The first difference I've noticed is that they've moved all the commands out onto two rows instead of making me select 'Done' to see a submenu. Hang on, they've renamed 'Aim' to 'Target'. When you press 'Target' in the D&D games, you're basically pulling the trigger on your attack, so that's going to get confusing.

Also pressing 'Next' when I'm aiming targeting selects the next nearest enemy, so I don't have to cycle through all my own guys first. They really have been making big changes this time around!

Look at how fast the targeting is now! It's just a shame there's not much else I can do in this battle. I can walk, but walk where? Even if I could get behind a wall there's no cover system, so I'd just have to come right back out again to attack.

I've told a wounded character to dodge, but that isn't a very interesting tactical decision. I can't cast 'cure light wounds' to heal her or put down 'stinking cloud' as a trap. Flash's Leadership skill lets me take command of some of the NEO troops in the battle, but all they can do is shoot their ray guns.

I'm not saying that combat is tedious and repetitive, but I bet you can't tell how long this GIF goes on before it loops.


(It's 1m 30s)

Instead of resting to get health back, or casting healing magic during the battle, my doctor treats wounds right after the fight. And only after the fight. If I have wounded or unconscious characters the best I can do for them is charge right into another battle and hope they're healed up a bit afterwards.

Fortunately it's not just my doctor doing the healing, as the multi-talented Flash Gordon helped a little tiny bit thanks to the points I put into first aid.

The battle is won, so now I get to take everything the enemies were wearing and holding, if I actually want any of it. Those spacesuits are the same as what I already have, so they can stay on the floor. I'm sure the pistols are the most basic you can get as well, but I do like the idea of having more ammo. I'll grab a couple, along with the grenades, and I'll also take that smartsuit.

These Gold Box games never want to just tell you the stats of an item, you have to search through tables printed in the manual (which is very D&D to be fair). Or I can just equip it and see how the armour class or damage changes. The smartsuit lowered my character's AC by 2, which is a good thing, and the 1D8 laser pistols have double the damage of my 1D4 bolt guns, which is a bad thing.

It's bad because I left most of them behind, thinking they were worthless to me!

Mega Drive

The Mega Drive game makes the inventory screen more interesting, representing objects with icons, and representing your character with either a blonde guy, or this blonde woman. Even if they're an alien from Venus.

There is one downside to everything being icons instead of words: it's all sci-fi stuff so I need those words to know what anything is. I keep having to highlight everything to read the name.

Okay, I'm starting to paint a picture of what this airfield looks like on my map. There are actually some buildings out here, though every direction I head in turns out to be wrong. If I go too far up, or left, or right I'm either blasted back by heat or I'm too exposed.

The process of elimination suggests that I need to get off the runway and go back down south to where my characters had that lecture earlier. There are some doors up here to try, but every time I pop inside one of them I get a message about how someone there died in the attack and it sucked for them.

SOON, BACK IN THE BUILDING

The game's not over-enthusiastic with its random encounter rate, but I've been fighting a decent number of battles along the way.

Enemies can't shoot through walls, but one of my heroes just learned that they can get you through doorways. It only took two shots to take him down and now he's out of the fight. It's fine though, as he'll be healed up by my doctor after we're done. Assuming that we win.

Hang on, that's my doctor they just gunned down! This isn't good, he's the one that does the healing! Plus he's currently 'dying' and that condition is going to quickly progress to 'dead' unless I figure out how to stop the bleeding. In the D&D games I'd just select 'Bandage', but the option isn't here!

Man, he was next in line for a new smartsuit as well. I was going to give him the loot right after the battle.

Those Terrine bastards shot him so hard that it turned his pants green. I guess drawing a unique body for every single character icon would've been effort an unnecessary use of memory.

Okay, if the doctor dies I lose the game, there's no way I can progress without him, so I need to make my next move very carefully. I am going to... switch auto combat on. The AI in these games isn't the brightest, but units always prioritise saving wounded party members. I hope.

The good news is that the doctor survived and the fight was won. The bad news is that the door ended up sealed shut afterwards due to a scripted event, so coming here got me nothing. I need to find another way to wherever it is I'm meant to be. 

I'm definitely making progress, as I'm inside the spaceport building, mapping its purple hallways. Though every random encounter leaves me with a little less health. All those characters with basic first aid skills need to actually do something, get my doctor back on his feet!

It wasn't long before someone else got KO'd, so now I only have four units. At least I've learned why I couldn't bandage the doctor earlier: you need to be standing next to them now. So I have to pay attention to where people have fallen and get someone over to them fast, not that it really matters much at this point. If anyone else falls unconscious I'm not going to have enough people left to win the next fight.

In fact, it's starting to seem like I should just quit dragging this out and load a save from back when my doctor wasn't unconscious.

EVENTUALLY

Mariner you're a damn hero! She only healed my doctor by 1 HP, but it was enough to get him to wake up and finish healing himself. He even brought my engineer back from death's door while he was at it.

Alright now that I have my doctor back I can save the game again! I can breathe again! 

Okay, I've learned an important lesson from this: keep your doctor alive. Without a doctor you're a dead man walking.

SOON

Things are not going well.

The enemies are putting up a little more of a fight than I'm used to and there are no NEO soldiers running to back me up this time. I feel like those battles I fought along the way were meant to build my team up so they'd be ready for this challenge. I'm not talking about the XP I've been earning, as I can't level anyone up until I find a trainer, but those laser pistols have been a big help and I've finally got everyone wearing smartsuit armour.

I got a lot of dazzle grenades too, which are used like flashbangs to blind opponents, but the enemies are standing too far apart to use them in a satisfying way.

Okay, I'm facing five enemies and three of them are in that room on the right, so I'm going to get everyone out and away from the door. That way I'll only have to worry about the two outside until the others move to put me back in my line of sight. Also if I choose 'guard' instead of taking an action, my guys will shoot anyone they spot walking around a corner. I can set up an ambush for them!

I can't believe that plan actually worked!

I also can't believe that the game's giving me a choice between jumping on a grenade or diving for cover without even giving me a chance to save first. I understand that these choose-your-own-adventure moments have more tension if there's something to lose, but I don't want to repeat that fight again!

Sorry, I just checked a walkthrough for the correct answer because I was lucky to make it through that battle and I don't want to push that luck. Turns out that you have to 'sacrifice' someone here (they take a bit of damage), or else the defence computer is wrecked and RAM destroys the entire spaceport.

So that's done and now I can finally go to Salvation Station to report for duty!

SALVATION III STATION

Yes, I know who you are.

Though this is actually the first time we've met Carlton Turabian in the flesh, as he was talking to us as a hologram last time. This time he's talking to me through my journal, as I have to look up entry #52 to see what he just said. I don't think this was typical for RPGs of the time, the Gold Box games are just awkward. And to be fair, the game had to fit into the RAM of a 64K Commodore 64, as not everyone had 512K Amigas.

Here's something that wasn't in previous Gold Box games: the character's names turn purple when they have enough XP to level up. I suppose the previous games expected players to check their experience every now and then and compare it to the tables in the manual, but I just used Gold Box Companion to keep track of it for me.

Anyway, it turns out that because of our performance in the crisis we've been assigned to a space tug immediately, so we can get on with salvaging space junk right away.

Oh, Salvation Station is another menu town like in Curse of the Azure Bonds and Champions of Krynn.

If this was a modern RPG they would've given the station some kind of introduction cutscene or something to show it off. Not just this tiny animation on the left that barely shows anything. I don't get to see what the interior looks like either, as selecting 'HQ' or 'Port' just brings up a different menu.

They didn't even draw the bar, which is wild because sci-fi video games love showing off seedy space bars.

Wing Commander (MS-DOS)

Wing Commander was released for DOS PCs the same year, so I'll pretend the bar looks like this. 

It's a bit unfair maybe to compare the two games, as Wing Commander looked exceptionally good for its time and Buck Rogers was designed to run on C64s, but I'm comparing them anyway!

Alright, I tried going to the bar and selected the option to have a drink. Then I tried selecting the option to talk to people. The game basically just said "You had a drink" and "You talked to people". Great feature, I'm glad they put it in.

Hey the shop screen actually tells me how much money I have! There's another new feature.

Though I'm going to have considerably less money when I'm done here, especially as I'll have to pay to get my guns reloaded. There's no separate ammo in this, the guns are more like wands with a limited number of charges, so I'll make sure everyone has a backup as well.

Then I think I'll get some poison antidotes, a breathing mask, and a rope. I've never needed a rope in a Gold Box game before, but I did need one halfway through a dungeon in Fallout so I'll take one just in case.

What's annoying is the shop screen still doesn't show how much damage these weapons do. I can equip them and check the damage listed on the character sheet, but even that's not the full story as it doesn't take into account the rate of fire.

So many numbers! Never mind my characters' skills, I'm the one who's going to need to improve my 'mathematics'.

Though my characters are going to need to invest more points into skills too, as they've all gotten a level up and this place can give them training. I think I'll stick to increasing the things I've already invested points in, because it's better to be fantastic at some things than barely competent at everything. Probably.

Okay, I've got my level ups, I've sold my old spacesuits, I've loaded my guns, I've wasted my time at the bar, and I'm ready to launch.

MISSION TWO

Well that was the least impressive launch sequence I've ever seen in a game, mostly because I didn't get to see anything. I didn't even get to see what my own ship looks like! It just cut straight to this.

Is that my ship over there on the right maybe? Or is that the derelict that we're investigating.

Anyway, the game has given me another choice and this time my options are basically 'Do your job and continue the story' and 'Don't go in there, you idiot! Have you never seen a sci-fi horror movie?' 

So it's not really a choice at all.

I'm really feeling good about choosing to enter the derelict spaceship. It's got moody red lighting, blood and slime dripping off the walls, screaming ghost holograms... basically everything aside from murderous xenomorphs and I'm sure they'll turn up sooner or later. 

I think I'll make a backup save, just in case.

Damn, I didn't expect the xenomorphs to turn up this quickly, I thought the game would build a bit of atmosphere first. But nope, one step and I'm in a fight.

Though I'm not sure my characters are walking around, as it says that Dureena just failed her zero-G skill roll. The penalty for failing a roll is apparently having movement reduced to 3 tiles and suffering -2 to combat actions, which sounds bad. I have actually been giving them all 'manoeuvre in zero-G' skill points, but I didn't expect it to be so important so quickly. It's kind of harsh putting the first real mission on a ship without gravity!

The combat is a little different to the D&D games as tactically positioning my troops isn't as much of a puzzle. I don't have to switch to melee weapons when someone's next to an enemy and moving them away doesn't give the monsters a free hit. Though stabbing the creatures from behind still seems to work.

Huh? Now I'm being attacked by security robots for damaging the creatures that attacked me? It's all action on this ship, I haven't even taken two steps inside yet!

When combat started again I got into the routine of pressing Target, Next, Attack over and over until it occurred to me I may as well just press Alt+Q to make them fight automatically.

While they're doing that, I need to think of some spooky spaceship music to play for this level. The game doesn't have its own music, but Gold Box Companion can automatically play appropriate tracks for exploration, combat, victory etc. as long as it has some tunes in its folders. Hey maybe the Alien Breed soundtrack would work! No, hang on, that game doesn't have any music either. Maybe the Alien soundtrack...

Oh no.

An itchy leg on a ship contaminated with aliens could mean all kinds of things, none of which I want. If I can't figure out what this is and find a way to deal with it, then we really are on a countdown to doomsday.

Cliffhanger ending! Come back next time to see if everyone dies or turns into a monster or whatever.

TO BE CONTINUED

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Thanks for reading! If you want to read more about Countdown to Doomsday, you won't have to wait long, probably just a week. In fact if you're reading this in the future then you're in luck, as I've likely published part 2 already.

There may even be some comments under this article. If not, you're in luck as you get to be first!