Steel Ranger 2 - An epic game for your Commodore 64 by Protovision

Well, here's a reason to fire up your C64 as Steel Ranger 2 has officially arrived on the Commodore 64. Developed as the highly anticipated follow-up to the hit 2018 side-scrolling action-adventure, this sequel has huge shoes to fill given that the original game earned widespread critical acclaim and was voted one of the top ten greatest C64 titles of all time by the homebrew community. Drawing heavy inspiration from timeless masterpieces like Turrican and Metroid, the new entry from developer Covert Bitops ups the ante with a completely overhauled gameplay engine, significantly smoother performance, and an expanded selection of devastating heavy weapons for players to wield.

The story leaps forward to the year 2224, picking up six years after humanity successfully defeated the rogue artificial intelligence known as Omega and its relentless mechanical horde. Just as the galaxy has begun to enjoy a hard-won era of peaceful reconstruction, a devastating wave of long-range orbital bombardments suddenly strikes multiple human colonies and space stations. Investigators trace the source of these lethal strikes back to the desolate wasteland of Earth, where ancient, automated, fail-deadly defense systems have mysteriously reactivated. While initial theories point to a catastrophic technical glitch, the discovery of nanobot residue among the wreckage hints at a much more malicious conspiracy, forcing the United Military's elite Rangers to deploy immediately. Taking control of a commanding officer aboard the scout vessel UMS Flail, players must spearhead a high-stakes investigation that quickly goes awry, leaving them isolated on a hostile planet to fight for survival and uncover the sinister truth.

From a technical perspective, the sequel ups the ante again, packing more than 800 individual screens to explore alongside ultra-smooth, full-framerate multidirectional scrolling. Players can hunt for hidden areas, upgrade their second-generation Ranger armour for better mobility and energy capacity, and switch between multiple firing modes on their standard rifle, mines, smartbombs, and energy blades to survive punishing boss battles and dozens of distinct enemy types. This is further bolstered by an atmospheric 45-minute original SID soundtrack, multiple save slots, choice-driven branching narrative outcomes, and versatile hardware options ensuring identical audio-visual performance across PAL and NTSC platforms. For modern retro setups, the digital release available via Protovision offers broad hardware compatibility out of the box, supporting disk images for various physical drives alongside a  EasyFlash cartridge build.

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