Title: The Rocketeer (JP/NA)
Release Date: 2/28/1992
Developer: Novalogic
Publisher: IGS
"What is The Rocketeer?" you may ask. Well it is a, now, little known action-adventure movie made in 1991 and produced by Disney. Back in the 1990's, Disney had a bevy of live action movies that it would produce with their own independent stories (instead of soulless retreads of their animated movies). These were the days of movies like Honey I Shrunk the Kids, White Fang, Iron Will, Cool Runnings, The Mighty Ducks, and The Three Musketeers (with Charlie Sheen as Artemis, imagine that!). Ensconced firmly in this era was The Rocketeer, a movie based on a early 80s comic book series, which was itself an homage to the old adventure stories and comics of the 1930's and 40s, such as The Phantom, The Shadow, or Prince Valiant. The movie was directed by Joe Johnson, who pretty much directed many of the Disney movies of the 90s, such as Jumanji, and most recently directed the first Captain America movie. While the movie retains a small bit of popularity, overall the movie did not do quite well, only making a 15 million dollar profit over a 30 million budget.
The movie is set in the 1930s, and focuses on a stunt pilot, Cliff Secord (played by Billy Campbell- maybe you saw him in the excellent show, The Killing), who stumbles upon an experimental jetpack that was stolen from the real-life aviator and titan of industry, Howard Hughs. Cliff uses this jetpack to become a masked superhero, and he fights the dastardly villains who seek the jetpack for their own nefarious ends. The villains in this case are, as fitting for the 1930's, Nazi spies who are looking to use the jetpack in their building war effort. The main villain, played by Timothy Dalton, is supposed to be a riff on Errol Flynn, a swashbuckling movie star who was rumored to be a Nazi sympathizer in Hollywood. This movie also features a ton of other performers, such as Paul Sorvino, Alan Arkin, Jennifer Connely (who is quite stunning in this movie), and Terry O' Quinn. Overall, it is an enjoyable romp, but very short lived (it clocks in a little over 90 minutes), and pretty forgettable.
Now the game is a weird retread but also sequel to the movie? At the end of the movie, the jetpack is destroyed, but the game begins with Cliff being told that a new, second jetpack has been created. The weird part is that the game then follows the plot of the movie again, ending with the same climax set piece from the movie, which is a showdown on a zeppelin. All told, the game is very short, and can be beaten in about 24 minutes.
The game was developed by Novalogic, a PC gaming developer which is probably most well known for the Delta Force series that remained popular through the 2000s. Surprisingly, this game also got a Japanese release, which is rare for a western developed game.
Oh boy a movie tie-in AND licensed game; even better, a licensed game for a movie that was only popular in the 90's? This has to be good, right? Let's jump in.
Background
"What is The Rocketeer?" you may ask. Well it is a, now, little known action-adventure movie made in 1991 and produced by Disney. Back in the 1990's, Disney had a bevy of live action movies that it would produce with their own independent stories (instead of soulless retreads of their animated movies). These were the days of movies like Honey I Shrunk the Kids, White Fang, Iron Will, Cool Runnings, The Mighty Ducks, and The Three Musketeers (with Charlie Sheen as Artemis, imagine that!). Ensconced firmly in this era was The Rocketeer, a movie based on a early 80s comic book series, which was itself an homage to the old adventure stories and comics of the 1930's and 40s, such as The Phantom, The Shadow, or Prince Valiant. The movie was directed by Joe Johnson, who pretty much directed many of the Disney movies of the 90s, such as Jumanji, and most recently directed the first Captain America movie. While the movie retains a small bit of popularity, overall the movie did not do quite well, only making a 15 million dollar profit over a 30 million budget. 
The movie is set in the 1930s, and focuses on a stunt pilot, Cliff Secord (played by Billy Campbell- maybe you saw him in the excellent show, The Killing), who stumbles upon an experimental jetpack that was stolen from the real-life aviator and titan of industry, Howard Hughs. Cliff uses this jetpack to become a masked superhero, and he fights the dastardly villains who seek the jetpack for their own nefarious ends. The villains in this case are, as fitting for the 1930's, Nazi spies who are looking to use the jetpack in their building war effort. The main villain, played by Timothy Dalton, is supposed to be a riff on Errol Flynn, a swashbuckling movie star who was rumored to be a Nazi sympathizer in Hollywood. This movie also features a ton of other performers, such as Paul Sorvino, Alan Arkin, Jennifer Connely (who is quite stunning in this movie), and Terry O' Quinn. Overall, it is an enjoyable romp, but very short lived (it clocks in a little over 90 minutes), and pretty forgettable.
Now the game is a weird retread but also sequel to the movie? At the end of the movie, the jetpack is destroyed, but the game begins with Cliff being told that a new, second jetpack has been created. The weird part is that the game then follows the plot of the movie again, ending with the same climax set piece from the movie, which is a showdown on a zeppelin. All told, the game is very short, and can be beaten in about 24 minutes.
The game was developed by Novalogic, a PC gaming developer which is probably most well known for the Delta Force series that remained popular through the 2000s. Surprisingly, this game also got a Japanese release, which is rare for a western developed game.
Gameplay
Gameplay-wise, this game is a weird mixed bag. It plays like a bunch of strung together mini-games that kind of loosely tell the story of the film. There are three "race" stages where you have to beat planes in a race around an airfield; there are also two shooting gallery stages where you are in a random shootout with a bunch of thugs. Then there are two schmup stages where you are assaulting Nazi forces as you are chasing down the zeppelin. Finally, there is a showdown on the blimp where you save the girl and duke it out with the bad guys.
This game is really, really underbaked and a hot mess. First off, the presentation is terrible. The game opens with a grainy image of the Rocketeer standing in front of an American flag, and the accompanying music is this whiny section of brass droning a really grating melody. It then cuts to these comic book style story cards to help set the scenes. They are not really well-drawn, and they are very static. After this, though, these title cards all but disappear, and we are given no context for any of the other levels. No story beats, no nothing; we are just expected to know the plot of this movie from the 90s and piece it together. They don't even offer a tutorial on any of the levels, like "how to fly the plane" or "how to control in the shoot-out." Half this game's difficulty is from not really knowing what to do.
This game is really hard, but for all the wrong reasons. It really boils down to poor design. Notoriously, this game has an almost impassable first couple of levels. You are told that if you want the new and improved jetpack, then you have to win two races in your biplane. The first race is 8 laps, while the second is 15. Now, the main issue with these races is that the course is set-up in the oval shape of a running track, yet the game shows displays the race in a side or profile view. This makes it very difficult to see what is going on in the race, and being able to tell your distance from the race markers that delineate the track is almost impossible. I banged my head against this level for 45 minutes before I finally cracked and looked at a walkthrough (reminder, this was the first level). It turns out that you don't want to look at the main picture, but the tiny display at the bottom of the screen, which shows the race from a 3rd person-behind the plane perspective, and is much easier to control. After learning this, it was a cake-walk, but this just strikes me as terrible design. If they switched the two displays, then this would have not been an issue at all, but instead you just get this garbled mess.
The shoot-out levels are not much better. The goal in the level is to kill enough enemies that the "ENEMY" meter drains completely; on top of this, you have to manage your own fuel and Cliff's health. The issue with this, though, is that you have a legion of enemies that pop out of every corner of the screen at once, and if you don't kill them within about 2 seconds, then they hit Cliff with unavoidable attacks. Your healthbar can and will drain completely in about 30 seconds if you don't move with some alacrity. There are health pickups, but they only appear at the top of the screen for a limited time; if you happen to have spent all your fuel already, then you are screwed. I found the only strategy that worked was to have Cliff shuffle from side to side on the screen very quickly and just spam the attack button. I wouldn't hit every enemy, but I would move off the screen quicker than they could attack me, and I would kill about 60% of the enemies. Even with continually grabbing health pick-ups, these levels I could only squeak by with a sliver of health. You have to do this level twice too, with the only two differences being that the enemies throw grenades the second time, and it ends with a very boring but difficult boss fight against a form of gun-ship (the level doesn't even change the layout of the stage).
The schmup stages are somehow the most broken of all, and where I stopped caring about the game. In these stages you have to just continue until you catch up to whatever you are chasing, and they are a slog. Each stage is about 6 minutes long, and the whole time the game just throws a ton of enemies at you. The worst enemies are the enemy Rocketeers, who just mercilessly chase you and shoot at your, and usually come in packs of four or five. This wouldn't be so bad if your character wasn't huge on the screen, and if you didn't control like an anvil. Your character overreacts to any input you put in: if you tap down, your character jerks to the top of the screen, and if you tap up, your character just slams into the bottom of the screen. It is one of the most frustrating set of levels I have played in a long time. Once again, I barely survived this section with only a sliver of health.
The final stage is just a pinnacle of bad game design. Your goal is to save your love from the evil Nazi who has her in his clutches, and you are trying to climb your way up the zeppelin to save her. You start on a lower platform, and you are trying to inch (and I do mean slowly inch) your way over to the ladder to make it to the next level. Each time you progress, an enemy rocketeer flies down, and you have to duke it out. The controls for this section are simply move, block, and punch, and it plays like Urban Champion for the NES. Sometimes the enemies are super easy and you can spam punch, other times they just block continuously, or stun lock you with their own punches. As soon as you kill one, you move another inch forward and fight another one. To make this worse, the main Nazi throws pretty much unavoidable explosives at you as you are fighting, so you can either give up your ground or just take damage and hope you survive. This section culminates with you climbing to the top level and having to quickly defeat the bad guy as a fire on the zeppelin creeps towards you. The game cranks the enemy AI up to full levels of cheap at this section, as this guy just never stops blocking. I did beat him, but only just barely.
Music
Just play this game with the sound off, because the music is atrocious and ear-grating.
Verdict
Never play this game. Seriously it is really, really, really bad.
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