0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Action Man Operation Extreme

       

Action Man Operation Extreme which was released as Action Man Mission Xtreme in Europe is an action shooter/vehicular combat game developed by Interactive Studios, they are the same studio that made the 2000 release Action Man Destruction X under the name Blitz Games, they changed their name sometime in 2000, the game was published by Hasbro Interactive and was released in Europe and North America on the 30^th November 2000

When you first start up the game you are greeted by Action Man’s apartment as the main menu screen from her players are able to access the games menu, which includes the games levels, cutscenes, the options menu and character and item menu.

The game consists of a total of six levels that are split 50/50 between action shooter based levels and vehicular combat based levels, with each of the vehicular based levels having a different type of vehicle for the player to use, the vehicle stages are from a top down view, with the games camera switching to an isometric view for the action/shooter levels.

The action/shooter based levels the player picks up a variety of weapons and tech to aid the player in progressing through the level, with levels usually ending with a boss fight, also during the course of the mission Action Man will receive additional objectives the game also features a enemy lock on system to allow for easier shooting.

Action Man is once again called into action this time to stop Professor Gangrene who is attempting to take over Action Man’s home city, however this is just a smokescreen to occupy out hero while Dr X puts his plan in motion to lure Action Man to various locations around the world with the aim to bring forth Action Man’s doom

Like the previous Action Man game I covered, reviews are tough to find so I look towards user ratings of the game, in the case of Action Man Operation Extreme I will be using GameFAQs and IGN user ratings, so lets start with GameFAQs where even user ratings are light in number with just 2 ratings.

Those two users have given this game an average rating of 2.75/5 with rating scores of 2/5 and 3.5/5 with one of these users clocking the game time around 20 hours, now heading to IGN for their user reviews with a similar user rating, with IGN using a 0 to 10 rating scale with the user rating coming in at a very very average  of 5/10 this rating was from a total of 13 user ratings.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific but from a podcast I listen to and  I have heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude where they will pay you $3 for your copy of the game if you are looking to trade it in, if however you are in the market for a copy of the game you are looking at a $9 outlay for a copy of the game from Gamedude.

Heading to Retrogames.co.uk who sadly don’t have a copy of the game available used or new so we will move onto eStarland.com who as well don’t currently carry a copy of the game, Amazon however do have plenty of copies on sale.

With prices for an acceptable quality disc only copy will set you back 99 cents, adding in the shipping costs however mean you are looking at a total cost of around $5 for a couple of dollars more however you can get a good quality copy of the game with case, manual, disc and cover, overall it is quite cheap to pick up a good quality used copy of the game on Amazon.

A decent enough new copies of the game are on sale on Amazon with prices starting at 1 cent, before you get too excited it does come with a shipping fee of $7.99 so $8 at minimum for a new copy of the game which converts to £6.15 in the UK, in the Euro region it will set you back €6.76 while in Fiji it will set you back $16.15 Fijian Dollars, new prices on Amazon range from $8 up to around $24.

Ebay.com while having less copies available they are mostly similarly priced with a disc only copy priced at $3.15 this ships from the UK and comes with free international shipping, a copy of the Best Of Infogrames version of the game will set you back $5.16 this as well comes with free international shipping as does a copy priced at $9.07.

 

Written by

P J Gibbon