Final Frontier Download (1989 Strategy Game)

When mankind started inputting the events into Earth's biosphere it was unable to handle, the biosphere crashed. Genetically modified organisms led to the death of all life forms except androids produced for the last war. They collected resources, built robots, sent them out to fight, and so on. The Earth made a replacement for the biosphere based on radiation energy rather than solar energy. The androids have discovered that the radiation storms leave a trail of nuclear material and have started collecting it for use as an energy source. And they've started to evolve. Collecting the metal debris, they've analyzed and redesigned the robots, advancing their evolution. Because of this situation, planetary review panel has asked the design council to stop the demolition of planet surface and reallocation to design pool. And design council has accepted the recommendation with one condition. A clearly dominant android form must emerge before the next review, or the planet will be reassigned to design pool.

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. First 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.

Final Frontier is a decent futuristic wargame that puts you in control of various robot military units. The game is one of Mirrorsoft's least known games, and for good reason: aside from the notable fact that this was one of the first real-time squad-level wargames ever made, there's not much to recommend in Final Frontier. The gameplay is simplistic, and ultimately quite boring due to the limited premise (conquer the opposing robot cities) and lack of unit variety. Some options, such as the ability to recruit enemy robots to join your cause, are interesting, but none of them really makes Final Frontier stand out from the crowded genre. The computer AI puts up a good fight, but the game never really rises from the tedium that sets in midway through as you produce enough units to use the all-too-familiar "tank rush" tactic typical in later real-time games. Overall, worth a look mostly as an example of a not-so-common below-average game from PSS.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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