We’ve made it to Z again, folks! And today’s a real stonker of a game that I used to really love playing back in the day. And still do today, in fact.
Zone Ranger was released in 1984 by Activision, back when they still made good games, and was the work of one Dan Thompson. Drawing loose inspiration from Asteroids and Sinistar, two favourite games of Thompson, Zone Ranger tasks you with shooting down a bunch of space junk because… why not?
It’s the quintessential mid-’80s arcade blaster in many ways: easy to learn, hard to master and very, very addictive.
Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.
Zone Ranger is a really nice looking game! I didn’t notice as much when I was first playing but looking at it now I’ve got the give the developer some kudos for the graphics work. There’s a lot of shading at work there with very few colours and it works a treat. 🙂
Yeah, it’s a nice looking game in a subtle sort of way. The player ship in particular had a nice amount of detail to it.