Stupid humans - as in almost every postapocalyptic game/book/film - have destroyed the whole planet earth. This time they didn’t just nuke it with some heavy bombs - this time they made themselves some sort of virus that was capable of making non-fattening sugar but unfortunately transformed the whole bottom half of the food chain to no-nutritional nourishment. Sad but true. Well they didn’t die by hunger - as we all know the human race - they started a great war. That’s how it ended. Oh no, it didn’t end completely! There were lots and lots of robots left from the war. Robots that were capable of producing new robots and collecting resources and, as a matter of fact, those robots were built to fight. (I now leave away the part with “you are the chosen one… blabla” that doen’t really fit too well into the game - read the manual for the complete story.)
Now there you are all alone with your “robot city” in a small zone on the huge continent. To win the game you must defeat all enemy robot cities in every zone. When I first saw this game (no not in 1987 - in 2006 in fact) I was quite sure that it would be worth not more than 1 point. Then Kosta got me the manual and now I am really tempted to give this game a 4 points rating. The most remarkable thing is that Final Frontier is a game from 1987 but it is in realtime! Probably one of the first RTS in the world of PC gaming? Who knows?
But now let’s get started on how the game works. For a very detailed view please refer to the manual, for a quick start read on.
You are off best when you start the game with “frontier.exe ega” that will change the standard CGA mode to EGA which means more colours in the main screen. (The other screens still are cga, but who cares? It’s the gameplay that count not the graphics, right?)
Fisr thing you see is an overview map of the current zone you are fighting in. Use the cursor keys to move the pointer and spacebar to click. On that map you see round and angled spots. The round spots are friendly units and the others are the foes. The aim in each zone is to destroy the enemy robot city. When you zoom into the map by clicking somewhere near the first visible round spot you will see a square. This is your robot city. Click on it to move it. When you come near an enemy he will shoot you. Always switch back to the overview map to see how many energy and shields you have left. To start fighting back you need to build your own combat robots. You start a production in the overview window by clicking the bottom right icon - the factory. There you can choose the layout and weapons of the unit. Once the new robot is built you can move it just like you move your robot city. You units will attack the enemy automatically when being in range.
Some other remarkable thing in Final Frontier is that you can even resurrect dead robots. Simply build a worker bot and move it to the dead unit. Build some scouts and warbots aswell to roam around the map to locate the enemy robot city. When having a bigger army destroy it. Once the zone is free move to the next and everything starts over again.
The game is quite unknown for reasons I cannot really explain. Maybe people were not ready for RTS in 1987? I can only advice you to take your time to check out how Final Frontier works. It’s probably worth some trying.
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