Buck Rogers XXVc

Apparition · October 08, 2017, 06:41:29 PM

I liked it, but I was also about four to six years old at the time.

Retrospectively, the first season was okie for '70s television science-fiction, but the second season was awful.

David Johansen · October 08, 2017, 06:44:06 PM

R2D2 and C3P0 had a painfully negative effect on the science fiction shows of the eighties. But it wasn't just a cute robot side kick, it was a cute robot side kick used to make adult jokes. It worked for Bender because Bender wasn't cute. I do think Twinkie could have been redeemed if there was a running joke where it got shot, run over, turned into a trash can, blew up and so forth every episode but as with all things it's all in the execution and I'm afraid executions are the only thing that could save that show. I was a kid when it came out and I wanted to watch it but nobody else in the family did so of course I bought it when the DVD set came out. I never got through it, good grief is it bad.

Dumarest · October 08, 2017, 06:59:30 PM

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;999344And the "cute robot sidekick" was a BAD idea.

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I liked Twiki better than C3P0.

Dumarest · October 08, 2017, 07:00:42 PM

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;999327So, really, it sounds to me like the biggest problem was the "Based on a Name By" aspect. Sort of like how the Disney "Three Musketeers" with Tim Curry as Richelieu was entertaining and all, but had pretty much fuckall to do with Dumas.

"Entertaining" is about the last adjective I associate with that dung heap.

David Johansen · October 08, 2017, 07:04:13 PM

The thing is that you're not supposed to like C3P0 he's a foil for the profane and urbane R2D2. Really, given that all the acting is done by Anthony Daniels you'd have no personality for R2D2 without C3P0. It's very a cleverly done on the venquilitrist's dummy.

Dumarest · October 08, 2017, 07:06:27 PM

Quote from: David Johansen;999357The thing is that you're not supposed to like C3P0 he's a foil for the profane and urbane R2D2. Really, given that all the acting is done by Anthony Daniels you'd have no personality for R2D2 without C3P0. It's very a cleverly done on the venquilitrist's dummy.

Let me put it this way: I fast forward through R2D2-C3P0 scenes.

David Johansen · October 08, 2017, 07:09:13 PM

That's okay, I must confess to having enjoyed the recent Three Musketeers movie with the airships and wirefu action. Different things bother different people, it happens. Twiki was stupid either way.

Voros · October 08, 2017, 07:54:59 PM

Quote from: David Johansen;999337Yes, pretty much. The designers at TSR weren't really thrilled by the project to begin with but managed to slip in a pretty decent setting and set of game rules in spite of that. It's a shame, I always found the Buck Rogers associations made it hard to get players to try it.

Who were the designers and where did you read that they weren't thrilled about it?

As for the TV show, it was the only reason the IP had the slimmest chance of succeeding. I loved the show as a kid, it was terrible but I find it campy enough to watch as an adult, particularly with Erin Gray and her skin-tight uniforms. The space vampire episode is rather creepy. There is a lot of smirking sexual attempts at humour that seem really out of place in a show for kids but I guess that was part of the attempt to make TV shows with wide 'appeal' in the 70s and 80s.

I discovered the original strips many years later and they are terrific.

David Johansen · October 08, 2017, 08:10:40 PM

I'm afraid it's a years of on-line discussion thing but here's the Wikipedia link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers_XXVC

Krimson · October 08, 2017, 08:36:29 PM

XXVc was great. I really enjoyed it. I still have the novels. I think there was nine in total, with only three involving Buck Rogers and the others involving other characters. I think my favorite thing was space combat, and I combined it with Battlesystem so I could do fleet vs fleet battles.

Armchair Gamer · October 08, 2017, 08:44:37 PM

Quote from: Voros;999382I discovered the original strips many years later and they are terrific.

I wonder if the 1993 game--which went back to the original strips and style--would have done better in the market of ten or twenty years later, or even without coming right on the heels of XXVc.

Philotomy Jurament · October 08, 2017, 09:00:11 PM

Quote from: Celestial;999211

I never played the game, but I think the art in that ad is pretty cool.

Omega · October 08, 2017, 09:09:31 PM

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;999338All respect to the actors involved, but I thought the Buck Rodgers TV show shat big chunks. The comics were cool.

All that said, I can see where LW may honestly have thought Buck Rodgers would be profitable. A thing known as "George's low-budget silly space movie that the studio let him make as a favor for his success with American Graffiti" turned into "one of the top grossing movies of all time," after all.

Loraine pulled royalties from every BR product TSR made.

Voros · October 08, 2017, 09:28:12 PM

Seems likely, but you don't actually know do you?

Since this was already argued into the ground let's try to keep this thread on topic and not turn it into a bitchfest about LW.

finarvyn · October 08, 2017, 09:36:41 PM

I've recently discovered "The Expanse" through both novels and syfy TV series, and I was thinking that XXVc would be a good rules set for that setting.