Welcome to Classic Game Room for the review of Zone Ranger on the Atari 5200. Sit back and relax. Enjoy. Unless you’re watching this on a treadmill on your phone, in which case don’t sit back and—well, it’s too late. Sorry. Zone Ranger is a bit confusing.

Thanks. It’s the Zone Ranger! Imagine Asteroids combined with Bosconian combined with video game driving controls on ice, and you’ve got Zone Ranger from Activision, released on the Atari 5200 in 1984.

There’s a Nissan‑looking symbol thing. Alert! Let’s get out there. I don’t know what that means. Is that bad? Probably not good. I don’t think anyone ever bought this game, but it’s a good game, so you should play it if you can find a copy. Alien space things—what are these? Am I fighting robots or aliens? Are they robot aliens? Like EDF? Honestly, if you haven’t played Atari 5200 today, have you even lived? Whoops. Zone Ranger. Great cartridge artwork. Very cool. Very ahead of its time. Seriously though, this game is a nice blending of Bosconian and asteroids.

I had to read the instructions online to figure out how to play it. It’s not immediately intuitive at all. The game is tough. What you do is fly around and destroy the satellites shooting the little green laser beams. They don’t hurt you, so don’t worry about the green laser beams. The red ones are bad, but the green ones are perfectly fine. Blow up all the satellites in each level to complete the level, but watch out for enemies, asteroids, and you can warp from one part of the level to another. That’s basically it. And watch out—you can crash into the satellites after they’ve been destroyed.

It may not look that hard at first, but after the first level it gets quite challenging once the enemies start to swarm you. There’s still a whole bunch of stuff I’m trying to figure out about this game. It’s pretty addictive once you get into it. Zone Ranger. I’ve had this for years and was digging through my shelves while writing Tome of Infinity, looking for the most obscure games in my collection. And of course that directed me right to this one. Zone Ranger!

Sort of like Galaxy Rangers, except not at all. According to the instructions, you’re supposed to shoot the satellites that look like they’re shooting at you, which I have found to be quite enjoyable. It takes some time to get into it, but it’s not ruined by the 5200 controller like a lot of other games. It has auto‑fire. The noise you hear is invincibility. You get that when you pick up the spark thing on screen. It comes in handy because it’s easy to crash into stuff.

Hey yo, this game is legit. It just is. Thanks. This thing—I need this thing. Badly. Get that thing. Stupid Death Star‑like thing. Stop running into me. Suckers! Invincibility is very helpful. This game’s awesome. Whoa, whoa!

I was going for the invincible thing! Gotcha. Whoa! Things over there. Man, how come more people don’t play this game? All you need is a working Atari 5200 and a functioning joystick. Who doesn’t have that? This game’s actually pretty good.

What do you think of being in Tome of Infinity? Whoa, get away from that thing. Why is it still shooting green? This game is sweet. Whoa. Yes! I am king of space! Master of Satellites, King of Space. Bonus round.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion Mark B I want to fly into it. Go! And what do I do? I fly into it. This is take two. Thanks for watching Classic Game Room because this has been Zone of Ranger. So close to Zone of Danger, it’s easy to mix up those words. You’ll see this in Tome of Infinity, my new book on Amazon. Zone of Ranger. E‑D‑E‑D‑E‑D‑E‑D‑E‑D‑F. That sounds like Twiki from Buck Rogers. Does everything make me think of Erin Gray? It does.