Out of this World! / Helicopter Rescue!

Also known as: Acoplagem! / Resgate! (South America), Voyage dans l'espace! / Sauvetage par hélicoptère! (Canada)

Developer: Magnavox

This combo cartridge has some good and some bad to it…and one of the games is very impressive graphically for its time…and both games here also involve flight, so they've got that sorta theme going on. Anyway, the first game on the cartridge is Out of this World! Out of this World! is a game that is primarily meant to be played with two players. Essentially, both players start with 50 megajoules of energy…that's basically 50 millions joules, for those of you not familiar with units to measure energy. As each round starts, both your lander and your opponent's lander will plummet to the surface of the moon at the bottom of the screen. Your goal is to activate your launch rockets before crashing into the planet so that you can achieve a safe landing. If you're successful with your landing, then you're good to start part two of this game and you'll receive up to 20 megajoules of energy as a reward…if not, then you can repair your ship by using 10 megajoules, but you're also given a time penalty. Once landed, your new goal is to launch yourself up at the top of the screen and try to run your lander into the pink mothership orbiting at the top of the screen. This will link your lander to the mothership and allow you to refuel up to 50 megajoules again. If you miss the mothership, then you'll get nothing, even if you manage to get a safe landing on your way back down to the surface of the moon. The first lander to successfully achieve 10 links with the mothership is declared the victor. There are three difficulties to this game, each with different gravity to make it more difficult to achieve your goals. The second game on this cart is Helicopter Rescue! Basically, you start with a helicopter on the ground and a person waiting to be rescued on the left side of the screen. Your goal is to fly over to the person, lower the rescue ladder, then raise the ladder once the person is safely inside. Then fly over to the right side of the screen where there is the small white line on the ground. This is where you'll drop off your rescued person. The goal is to do as many drop offs as possible in the time allowed. Unfortunately, the gameplay is extremely slow and since the person is always in the exact same location and you're always dropping them off in the exact same location, it gets very old very fast. It needs to be noted that Helicopter Rescue! has some amazing effects of its time. The helicopter is large and animated well. When you turn the helicopter left or right, it even is animated in a way to give you a crude sense of 3D. While you're flying around, you'll also hear decent helicopter sound effects. Unfortunately, due to the slow, repetitive gameplay, this may be one of the earliest examples of a game where the focus was put in the looks of the game more than the actual gameplay. Anyway, neither game here is particularly fun, and the unfortunate end result is a pair of games that I wanted to like, but just was unable to. Out of this World! can be mildly fun with a friend, and Helicopter Rescue! is pretty amazing to look at for a game of its time, but neither game is really worth playing.

Out of this World!

My Score

5.0

Avg Score

5.3

Placement on the List

Helicopter Rescue!

My Score

3.5

Avg Score

4.4

Placement on the List

Review added: 12/03/2025