Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 34: Gold Box - Buck Rogers XXVc: Matrix Cubed (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1992

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Systems:

DOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Buck Rogers XXVc: Matrix Cubed - Science Fiction Role-Playing Game, Vol II, for MS-DOS. It's nice to get back to science fiction for a bit. I like fantasy, but sci-fi's where my heart is.

DOS has its moments too, especially now that I'm in the VGA/Sound Blaster era, though it's a shame that the game was entirely bound to it. Volume I came out for C64, Amiga and even the Mega Drive/Genesis, but this is DOS exclusive.

This is the second and last of the Buck Rogers XXVc Gold Box RPGs made by Strategic Simulations Inc., though the theme music makes it sound like it should be a Wing Commander game. It wasn't a huge shock when I saw Wing Commander composer The Fat Man credited (along with Ralph Thomas), and I won't be surprised if this is all the music I get either. I've already played a few Gold Box games at this point, in fact I've played almost all of them, so I know what they're like.

If you're wondering why I've labelled a Buck Rogers game as "Dungeons & Dragons", it's because it's based on a tabletop game by D&D publisher TSR, it's made by D&D video game developer SSI, and it runs on the Gold Box D&D engine, so I'm including it as a special bonus to finish off my articles on the first decade of D&D video games: 1982-1991. Even though it came out in 1992.

As usual I've no plans to finish the game, but I'll play it for long enough for there to be SPOILERS, probably, so be aware of what you're getting into.

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Gold Box games start by giving you a choice between "Play" and "Demo", so I put the demo on to get a glimpse of the art I'll be missing out on when I turn it off after a couple of hours.

The lighting on this portrait is a bit more ambitious than I'm used to, so that's probably a good sign. They haven't updated the UI frame at all though, which is a shame as for Gold Box RPGs it's like the game's fingerprint. 

It's that one unique trait that lets you identify what you're looking at.

That's Buck Rogers himself in the bottom middle. He's an astronaut from the futuristic date of 1999 who was cryogenically frozen after his ship took damage. His body was finally recovered in the year 2456 and he decided to join the New Earth Organization rebels (NEO) to liberate Earth from the Russo-American Mercantile (RAM).

This has nothing to do with me though, as you don't actually play as him! It's like The Legend of Zelda - I'm Link, he's the princess.

Damn, I don't know what the hell this thing is, but spaceships have no business having teeth.

It's interesting that they've gone all 'organic technology' on this, as that's something that became popular in the latter half of the '90s, in things like Babylon 5, Lexx and Farscape. Though I suppose I'm only thinking about television; I have no idea what gross bone spaceships were showing up in books and comics around this time.

Hang on, I have to outwit my opponents in this? Damn, they're really expecting a lot from me here. It's going to be hard enough for me to put together an effective team that can outfight them.

Before I play I'll need to create six characters. I could just import them from the last game I suppose, but I never finished it so my level 5 / level 6 heroes are going to be trash compared to the level 7 heroes you get from the character creator.

There are no elves in this one, instead there are species like Martians, Mercurians and Terrans. Some give you bonuses, some of them suck, but none of them are ever going to be acknowledged by other characters so you can pick what you want and the story won't change. I remember that Desert Runners make amazing warriors and Tinkers are good medics and engineers, so I'll be making a lot of them.

I'm planning out my team with a spreadsheet to make sure I have all the bases covered. I need a good mix of classes and the ability scores (strength, intelligence etc.) to support them. I've heard the game's pretty harsh so I'm not feeling guilty about raising the numbers a bit.

Another reason I want to make new heroes is to sort out their skills, as my choices in the last game got a little chaotic.

Unlike the other Gold Box RPGs, the Buck Rogers games give you Fallout-style skills which come into play in sometimes mysterious ways. Basically how it works is that you choose skills that best match the characters you're creating, and then 30 hours later you find that the game's unwinnable because you didn't invest in 'pilot fixed wing'. That's what I've read at least.

So I'm picking exactly what the walkthrough and clue book tells me to pick, because I don't want to find myself in a galaxy of pain 10 hours in just because I didn't have 50 points in origami or violin tutoring or something.

Finally you get to choose your character's icon in combat and it's the exact same set as in the previous game. In fact, this is the previous game as I didn't see the point in uploading a new screenshot.

It makes sense that they'd reuse the old art as you can import your old characters, but it would've been nice to have some new choices to go with them. Also I like the early '90s fluorescent colours, but it'd be nice if I could adjust them a bit, for things like hair and skin colour. Yeah I know I've been whining about having to change the colours for all my characters in the other Gold Box games, but that's because it takes forever to cycle through them.

Alright, that's one hero down. Now I have to make the other five.

SOON

There's my whole team done. The stats can go really high in this one; there's no need to think about percentages for fighters that hit 18 strength, you just go right past to 20.

Sadly they're not actually holding the weapons in their pictures, they're more aspirational. Someday I'll get Karin a rocket launcher, but for now she's only indispensable because of her medical talents.

Oh no, I hate looking up words in the manual for the copy protection! This is actually fairly painless, but some games can be really vague about where you start counting from to find the word they want. Hang on, it's asking me to look in the journal entries.

The story and dialogue was apparently too big to fit on a set of floppy disks so a lot of it was printed in the log book instead, in the form of separate numbered blocks of text. You're not supposed to read any of it until you're given a number to look up, but this wants me to look at Tsubulu's plan! Whoever that is.

I'll just squint my eyes or something.

Hey it's Buck Rogers himself, and they've even given him new art!

My team started off in orbit around Mercury, preparing to do a boring babysitting mission. We're protecting the new Sun King, Lord Berkeley. He's calling for a brotherhood between the different branches of humanity in the solar system and this has made him enemies.

I don't know if he's the space president or a mascot for a brand of fruit juice, but it's critical that we prevent him from getting assassinated. 

First thing I need to do is get my gear from the equipment locker and then decide who gets what. I don't think there's a limit on what rogues can wear in this one, I can give anyone anything. 

As usual for a Gold Box RPG, the game's giving me absolutely no hint about how the items compare against each other. Is battle armor better than heavy body armor? Is a rocket pistol better than a needle gun?

Fortunately I can just check the list in the manual, which lists all of their stats in a nice clear table.

Okay, so the needle gun does 1d3 damage and fires six times, while the rocket rifle does 2d8 and fires twice, so I just need to multiply the minimum and maximum by the number of dice and the rate of fire and then... actually I'm just going to look up a table online because it'll be way faster.

	Regular	Martian	Venusian	Mercurian	Lunarian
Mono Sword	14-32	16-34	18-36	20-38	22-40
Needle Gun	6-18	12-24	18-30	24-36	30-42
Rocket Pistol	4-40	8-44	12-48	16-52	20-56

Okay, so it's rocket pistols I want to give to people. Though rocket pistols aren't created equally, with Martian guns getting a 1 point damage bonus, Venusian guns getting 2 points and so on. It's like the +1, +2 etc. magic swords in Dungeons & Dragons, except... no it's pretty much exactly that.

And the battle armor is better than the heavy body armor, as long as I remember to equip it.

CALORIS STATION DOCK

Well I'm not sure where I am exactly, but the message box claims that it's thronged with people dressed for the coronation. Yep, definitely looks thronged. I've never seen a dock more thronged than this. 

I don't know if we're in charge of security or investigating threats, or what we're doing, but... oh hang on, someone's coming over.

The chancellor is called Alphonse De Sade? Somehow I get the feeling the game doesn't want me to trust this guy. The portrait makes him look a bit shifty as well. He's wearing a barrister's wig made from Lemming hair and that's always been a red flag for me.

Okay, I have no idea where I'm supposed to be going, but before I start wandering aimlessly I'm going to equip my gear. My team is already carrying some stuff, but the weapons I picked up from the locker are better. Hang on, it turns out that the guns I found only have 10 bullets. Oh that's going to work great, thanks game.

I walked forward through the door and got told by a voice to get back out, as it's a cargo elevator. Why did the level designer put it right in front of me then? Where's Rolf from Pool of Radiance, I need him to give me one of his tours.

As I stepped out of the cargo elevator a man rushed up to us, claiming that he needs to see the Sun King immediately!

I feel like we're probably supposed to be keeping people away from the space president, so I'm not overly keen on arranging a meeting. I'm sure if this Dr Romney was actually important to the story he would've gotten his own portrait.

Oh hang on, a guy with a portrait just showed up. Now things are getting real.

The Terran leader is dragging Dr Romney to his car and I've got three choices: I can help Romney, I can call security, or I can aid the Terrans.

I feel like this is a bit too urgent for security to deal with, and maybe I shouldn't be aiding the people trying to shove a guy into a car. I guess I'm helping Romney then.

The game switched to the turn-based tactical combat screen and straight away the Terran PURGE warriors threw something that spilled a white substance everywhere. My guess: it's vanilla milkshake, bought from a nearby Space McDonalds and dropped the moment it put them at a tactical disadvantage.

For my first turn I got to control Ronon, a warrior with a mono sword. This guy is perfect for getting behind enemies and backstabbing them, but I need someone else to set it up. Enemies turn to face the person who's attacking them, so I should get another unit to shoot them with a pistol so I can stab them from the opposite side.

Huh, my characters with rocket pistols aren't doing any damage? Oh, I remember this now! Certain grenades or ECM devices equipped by enemies jam the rockets, causing them to miss. Well, I didn't have enough ammo for them anyway.

After a few turns the white gas disappeared and I took the opportunity to send over every bullet I had. Meanwhile they took the opportunity to throw explosive grenades. They've already taken out my pilot and it's only the first battle.

I still managed to win though! That means my doctor was able to get to work healing people, and the characters with first aid training joined in a bit too. 

What's kind of unique about the Buck Rogers RPGs is that there's no way to recover health aside from winning battles or visiting clinics. In the other Gold Box games I'd always be looking for places where I could have a nap and heal people up, but here that's not an option. If characters are dangerously low on health the best thing you can do is go look for another fight and try to keep them behind a wall.

Oh, if you're wondering about those windows bolted onto the side of DOSBox, those are part of the Gold Box Companion add-on I've got running. The game's a maze of identical rooms and hallways, so I need a proper automap.

Hey I got loot too! I have no idea what protective goggles do, but I'm taking them. I think that ECM package is what makes rocket pistols miss, so I'll have that too. Oh, chaff grenades, that's the other thing that jams up rocket pistols. You know what, I'll just take everything, I've got the space.

All grenades of the same type are automatically put into the same slot, which I appreciate. Saves me a bit of messing around. However ammo cannot be removed from a gun and added to another, so I can either carry a bunch of spare needle guns or I can throw all those bullets away.

Well Dr Romney got driven away in a car, but I did get his papers at least. I decided to have a peek and the game asked me to check journal entry 9. Fortunately Gold Box Companion is coming to my rescue once again by letting me read it in the game window.

Okay, so I'm carrying the secret to saving the world, that's pretty cool. Seems like we probably don't want Dr Romney talking to the enemy, but my priority has to be saving the Sun King from assassination.

It would've been nice of Buck or De Sade or anyone to give me directions, but they've left me to find Lord Berkeley through trial and error. I just need to check every door on Caloris until I find the room he's in. At least I don't have to chat to every NPC too, because... well, there aren't any.

We walked down the street a bit and ended up in a fight with RAM assassins after Dash Rendar noticed their insignia! I wasn't expecting to get a bunch of random encounters here, I assumed this was a friendly base.

Turns out that Buck should've assigned security to protect us, especially considering how badly the battle went for me. I mean I survived, barely, but the assassins gave me a thorough demonstration of the effectiveness of grenades. And then afterwards they gave me all their loot.

They had a bit of fun with the gradient fill tool with this image.

Also it turns out that there's a shop and an clinic here right next to the start! That means I'm in the rare situation of random encounters dropping loot that's worth selling, right next to a place I can sell it. I'm not going to look for extra trouble, it's already hard enough looking for the Sun King, but I will be picking up everything I can from every fight and bringing it here when inventories get full.

I'll also be buying some new Martian needle guns. One gun can store 250 bullets, which should be enough for now I think. I don't want to spend more on bullets than I'm making by selling enemy smartsuits.

LATER

Terran forces rushed me. THEY ATTACK!

It's not much of a surprise at this point, I've already fought so many of these guys. The random encounter rate isn't too bad, it's just that I've been wandering around for ages. It got to the point where a voice on the PA told me to go to the nearest courtesy console. There, De Sade told me to head to the coronation hall in the southwest corner of the station. This is the future, why isn't anyone just sending me a text on my space phone?

I'm almost done searching every other door on the station so I might as well finish that off first. I've used Gold Box Companion to mark a few places with notes: the shop, the clinic etc., but there's not a whole lot here that's any interest to us.

Nice, I've reached the coronation hall and gotten some full screen art at last.

Oh damn, now it's asking me to make a choice: do I knock down the Sun King because a Martian reached into their robe? I'm assuming everyone else in the hall has been searched for obvious weapons and my gut is telling me that the game's tempting me into making a stupid choice. You know what, I'm not going to tackle the space president in front of all his guards with a room full of witnesses.

The Martians pulled out guns and blasted a hole in the Sun King's chest. Okay, just let me load my latest save game...

What's interesting about this is that failing to save the Sun King put me straight into a battle, the game carried on. But you can also succeed at saving the Sun King, so you can actually change how the story plays out! More than you can do in most Gold Box games at least.

AFTER THE BATTLE

Three characters are ready to level up after that, you can tell by the yellow bar under their name.

That's what the coronation hall looks like by the way. I don't actually know if it's still packed full of dignitaries or not, but then that's true of the whole station. Are there still throngs of people in the streets or did they clear out after the first few random encounters? Oh damn, I just walked into another random battle inside the coronation hall!

I went to see De Sade afterwards and he had a look at the papers, declaring them to be the work of a madman. In fact he suggests that we just leave them with him, and he'll take care of them. Thanks De Sade, I didn't know you handled the trash. Though I think I'll hold onto them for now.

Oh shit, I got ambushed by Mercurians on the way to the clinic! They must be very confident about their chances as they've let slip that they're working for De Sade.

I don't really want a fight right now though, what I want is a place to heal. Actually what I want is a place to level up, and then some clear directions to the next room where the story's taking place. Though at least now I know what the Mercurian rogue in my party looks like.

EVENTUALLY

Hey it's Scot.dos, our ship's computer. Though you wouldn't know that without playing the first game. His art hasn't changed one bit, but it's fine.

The important thing is that's he's given me a clear direction to head in. I don't know what triggers these messages to come up, maybe I killed the correct enemy, maybe I walked down the right hallway. But it could be that the game saw me wandering around clueless and decided to finally step in and give me some guidance.

You again? Dude, it doesn't matter how many times you let us hit you in the face, it's not going to make you any less cross-eyed.

I've played enough battles now to know to space my units out when facing enemies with explosive grenades, unfortunately they got me before I'd even had a turn to move. But it was when they took my only medic out that I really started to worry...

Anyway, long story short, they had some great loot. Battle armour w/fields (the best kind), a rocket launcher, and a Mercurian needle gun. I nearly misread it as 'Martian' and left it behind, but this would've been a big mistake. Martian is +1 and Mercurian is +3, and that's per shot. Needle guns fire 6 shots per turn, so it adds up. Okay, where's that clinic? I've got a medic who needs patching up.

SALVATION STATION

With their first mission complete the heroes return to Salvation Station, their home base from the first game. It's exactly the same as it was: same art, same everything. I'm a huge fan of consistency in fictional realities, but they could've shown it from a different angle or something!

Buck mentioned something about someone building another doomsday laser to attack the Earth, which was also the plot of the first game, Countdown to Doomsday. But it can wait a minute, as everyone with a purple name is due a level up. In fact some of them are halfway to their second level up.

Levelling up is a bit more complicated than in the D&D Gold Box games, as I have to pick what skills to invest points into. I'm not limited to the ones I chose during character creation, but I can only pick one new skill per level and you don't level up much in this game. Okay, where did I leave the spreadsheet? I need to get this right.

I bought some armour and ammo and then set sail with my ship, which turns out to still be the Maelstrom Rider - the RAM bioweapon lab I claimed after nearly falling victim to it

And this solar system map is still exactly the same as it was in the first game. They could've at least labelled the destinations, seeing as the heroes have already been everywhere by this point and know what everything is.

Fortunately I can just check the book. Not the manual book or the journal book, but the clue book. 

I'm heading to the RAM base on Ceres as that's where this second doomsday laser is supposedly being built. Hey I went to an asteroid first in Countdown to Doomsday as well. This all feels just like the first game, with how I'm steering the ship with the arrow keys and choosing to run from heavy cruisers. 

I arrived at Ceres and the RAM officers there mistook us for the ship's original crew, exactly like in the other game! I'm starting to get a bit worried now as I remember that RAM base being a massive maze. I'm going to glance at the clue book to see if I'm going to be needing its map.

Oh, that's pretty manageable.

Okay we've landed at the RAM base and everything thinks we're supposed to be here, though the guards are keen for me to stay out of restricted areas. I'm trying to be sneaky and clever but none of the rooms near the dock has the access card I need to get through to the top half of the base.

Access denied.

I decided to risk picking the lock on one of the other doors and found myself in a maintenance room. This got me absolutely nothing. I guess I'm supposed to attack the lone guard in the mess hall and take his key. Nope, didn't get me anything. Fine I'll just attack the guards at the command centre and set the whole base on alert, because I don't know what else to do.

(It turns out that the less violent solution is to go to the guard barracks and steal uniforms).

Hey I found the death laser control. When I played around with the laser in System Shock I accidentally blew up the earth so maybe I should just do a Han Solo and blast the panel to be safe.

Incidentally there are two ways to get into this laser control room: watch the general type in the code using a security monitor or just find it written on a bit of paper under his sink (like I did). Multiple solutions!

I decided to play with the switches on the doomsday laser to try to blow up the enemy ship in orbit, but I couldn't figure it out so I just strapped a time bomb to it and blew up the base in a brilliant shower of sparks. Doesn't seem like 'non-lethal' was ever really an option here.

Unfortunately destroying the enemy cruiser with the laser was an option, and I failed to achieve it.

Okay space combat seems pretty much the same as the first game, more like a classic turn-based RPG without tactical movement. I can choose to to have my rocket jock pilot close in on the enemy while other characters fire the weapons. If my ship takes damage (which is very likely fighting an enemy ship this powerful), my engineer can start to do repairs and keep us in the fight.

Or I could just run away. That seems like the more sensible strategy. If we were up against a small scout cruiser I'd attack, try to board them, get some booty. But the Maelstrom Rider is not a match for a heavy cruiser.

We returned to Sanctuary and Buck explained what the rest of the game is going to be about. View logbook entry 17 for details.

Basically NEO is going to use Dr Romney's notes to make the Matrix device and fix the Earth! There's only one problem: a lot of the technology doesn't exist yet, so I need to find scientists to invent it.

He's given me two destinations to start with, the Venus Lowlands and Losangelorg on Earth. But which one will I choose to visit? Come back next week to find out!

TO BE CONTINUED

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The Buck Rogers adventure continues next week with the second part of Matrix Cubed, where I visit the Venus Lowlands! Oh crap, that was supposed to be a mystery.

Anyway, you can leave a comment about the first part of the game right now if you want.