Mars Saga

Mars Saga is a role-playing video game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Electronic Arts for the Commodore 64 in 1988.

Following a legal battle against Electronic Arts for rights on the franchise, Westwood turned to Infocom to publish the Apple II and MS-DOS ports.

[1] The player takes the role of Tom Jetland, a down-on-his-luck space traveller trapped on Mars after crashing his ship.

While searching for jobs to make enough money to get back off the planet, he discovers a conspiracy hiding contact with what seems to be alien life.

Computer Gaming World described the game as accessible to newcomers to the genre, including features like auto-mapping, allowing the player to save without switching disks, and allowing the computer to control the player's characters during combat.