Awakened from your centuries long sleep in the 25th Century, you are Buck Rogers, ancient military hero and symbol of earlier times. As you are brought up to date, you decide to join the New Earth Organization (NEO), to fight for your home planet.

Once you had fought in the cold war, a pilot sent into outer space to destroy a Russian weapons platform. You were successful, but your success destroyed the planet, as nuclear war was launched, and you went into a centuries long cryogenic sleep, abandoned by the people who could not retrieve you. In the centuries that you slept, Earth colonized the solar system. There are large groups of people on Mars, Venus and Saturn. The colonies once existed to bring resources back to an Earth that had problems sustaining itself.

But the intervening centuries brought a power shift. Now Earth is at the Mercy of the interstellar alliance RAM—formerly the Russian-American Mercantile, but now the superpower, based on asteroids surrounding the planet Mercury. Mercury exploits the Earth for resources, at the expense of Earth's population. Earth has fallen into barbarism, except for one small light — the New Earth Organization (NEO).

These “rebels” consider themselves freedom-fighters, and they are fighting for Earth's freedom from the interstellar powers. Call it patriotism, if you will, but you join them — the only person alive who can remember when Earth was supreme and healthy.

You assemble a team, and begin your attack…

Choose a party of six adventurers from three races (human, desert runner and tinker), select their gender, career (rocket jock, medic, warrior, or rogue) and “roll” for various attributes such as strength, dexterity, constitution, charisma and technology. Characters can also specialize in skills that can help the party as they embark on their intergalactic adventure. Some of these skills include programming, first aid, repairing rockets, zero-gravity maneuvering and various others.

There are two main viewpoints used within the game: an overhead land-based and first-person ship perspective. Combat on land involves moving a limited amount of spaces (depending on your character) and choosing to either attack, defend or use one of fifty different items found in the game.

Buck Rogers – Countdown to Doomsday also features battery backup to save up to three games in progress, and includes an eighty-page manual complete with hints and maps. Is the game moving too slow for your tastes? Players can increase or decrease the game's speed to one of five different settings.