Friday, September 6, 2024

80s Action Cartoons Were Very Gameable

I'm not just talking about the usual suspects like Thundarr the Barbarian or The Pirates of Darkwater; or ones that already have games like G.I. Joe, Transformers, or of course, Dungeons & Dragons. Even the deeper cuts are great too. Let's take a look at a sampling and the gaming inspiration they provide.


Sky Commanders (1987)
If you're a fan of hexcrawls or even pointcrawls, could I interest you in high elevation, feature-to-feature exploration? The premise is a new continent has arisen in the Pacific thanks to some weird energy source, and a multi-national group of mountaineering-specialist good-guys fight the baddies via flight, or by using "laser cables," a fancy rappelling line shot from combat backpacks. There are all sorts of environmental hazards to contend with too, and some monsters.


Spiral Zone (1987)
The high concept takeaway here might be G.I. Joe meets the Walking Dead. In the show, an evil scientist and his Road Warrior refugee have released a weird, bioactive mist (the Spiral Zone) that turns the people in it into mindless zombies. A crack team of agents and their tricked-out vehicles and protective suits do battle with the badguys. A twist is that both sides want to limit civilian casualties as the bad guys want to use them, and the good guys want to save them. 


Defenders of the Earth (1986)
While this team-up of several King Features Syndicate characters against Ming the Merciless might seem like a low-powered supers thing (and in some ways it is), the takeaway here, I think, is genre crossover. You've got a sword & planet guy, a pulp hero (or two), and a wizard who get together to take out a villain.

6 comments:

Dick McGee said...

This has been coming up a lot lately on various forums. Other likely candidates include the Inhumanoids, Centurions, Galaxy Rangers, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Jem, M.A.S.K., Sectaurs, Bionic Six, Starcom, Visionaries, Dinosaucers, COPS, Dino-Riders, Ulysses 31...and that's not even considering the "Disney Afternoon" shows (all very gameable), the "toy commercial" shows started by He-Man and including Tigersharks, Bravestarr, etc., or the increasing flood of anime showing up during the decade.

Also, the 90s show Exosquad really deserves a look.

Trey said...

EXO Squad definitely deserves a full game.

PT Dilloway said...

I'd like an Exo Squad game if they included the Robotech stuff in it. I don't think anyone mentioned it yet but Silverhawks and Thundercats would be good. Air Raiders is one I think has been underrated and would have a pretty interesting world for gameplay.

Articunousedblizzard said...

Cadillacs and dinosaurs

Dick McGee said...

@Articunousedblizzard Cadillacs and Dinosaurs already had an RPG from GDW back in the day. IIRC it predated the animated series, even.

Dale Houston said...

I'm too old for these, but the slightly earlier Thundarr the Barbarian would be a lot of fun as an RPG.