Dropzone is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by Archer Maclean (under the name Arena Graphics) for the Atari 8-bit family and published in 1984 by U.S. Gold. It was ported to the Commodore 64, and later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Game Gear, and Game Boy Color.
Maclean’s first commercial game, Dropzone is similar in gameplay and style to the arcade game Defender and borrows many elements,[2][1] including the same style of font, aliens, and title screen.[3][4]
Plot – Dropzone
On the surface of Jupiter‘s moon, Io, a human scientific research base is under attack by aliens. The player dons a jetpack armed with a laser, a cloaking device and three smart bombs, to rescue the scientists and return them to the base.
Gameplay – Dropzone
The gameplay is in the style of Williams Electronics’ Defender, with some influences from Scramble and Robotron: 2084.[2] Players control the hero trying to rescue the scientists on a horizontally-scrolling game field.[3] Players must elude or engage various aliens—some slow, others faster—and return the scientists to the base’s eponymous dropzone. The aliens capture scientists walking along the ground. The player must shoot the enemy aliens and catch the falling scientists. Sometimes the aliens will carry lethal androids instead, which must be avoided.[3]
There are 99 levels of gameplay, each increasingly difficult. After level 99, the levels repeat starting level 95.
Development – Dropzone
Maclean purchased an Atari 800 as soon as they were officially launched in the UK in 1981 and started writing what would eventually evolve into Dropzone. Maclean converted the game to the Commodore 64 himself:[2]
The [Commodore] 64 Dropzone is about 46k [kilobytes] long and consists of 15,000 lines of sparsely commented code with around 350 subroutines and around 3000 labels. Those who can reach Megastar status on the 64 should have had enough practice to attempt an Atari supervised Dropzone mission. The Atari, being the Porsche of home computers, is capable of running Dropzone 2.5 times faster than the 64 and can handle any amount of blobs on screen, even when you release a Strata Bomb. It is visually, sonically etc., identical and about 12K shorter. However, the 64 is still a respectable BMW316.
