''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 U.S. Gold Limited was a British video game publisher based in Witton, Birmingham, England. The company was founded in 1984 by Anne and Geoff Brown in parallel to their distributor firm, CentreSoft, both of which became part of Woodward Brown Ho ...

. It was ported to the Commodore 64, then later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System,

Game Boy The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same t ...

Game Gear The is an 8-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation handheld game console released by Sega on October 6, 1990, in Japan, in April 1991 throughout North America and Europe, and during 1992 in Australia. The Game Gear pri ...

, 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, including the same style of font, aliens, and title screen.

Plot

On the surface of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

's moon, Io, a human scientific research base is under attack by aliens. The player dons a jetpack armed with a

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...

, a

cloaking device A cloaking device is a hypothetical or fictional stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Fictional cloaking devices have be ...

and three

smart bombs A guided bomb (also known as a smart bomb, guided bomb unit, or GBU) is a precision-guided munition designed to achieve a smaller circular error probable (CEP). The creation of precision-guided munitions resulted in the retroactive renaming of ...

, to rescue the scientists and return them to the base.

Gameplay

The gameplay is in the style of Williams Electronics' ''Defender'', with some influences from '' Scramble'' and '' Robotron: 2084''. Players control the hero trying to rescue the scientists on a horizontally-scrolling game field. 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. There are 99 levels of gameplay, each increasingly difficult. After level 99, the levels repeat starting level 95.

Development

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: The name ''Dropzone'' was not settled on until shortly before the game went gold. Maclean entered into a publishing deal with

for the

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

an distribution of the game. After 18 months, however, they stopped paying him royalties claiming that the game was no longer selling. In addition, Maclean saw it for sale in areas outside of Europe and even in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Four years of legal wrangling with the publisher followed, until they finally settled out of court for

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

. With the proceeds from the settlement, Maclean bought his first Ferrari.

Reception

The Atari 8-bit version received overwhelmingly good reviews. A reviewer for '' Computer and Video Games'' in a May 1985 review stated that ''Dropzone'' was one of the best Atari games and Atari owners could not afford to miss this game.

Personal Computer World ''Personal Computer World'' (''PCW'') (February 1978 - June 2009) was the first British computer magazine. Although for at least the last decade it contained a high proportion of Windows PC content (reflecting the state of the IT field), the mag ...

reviewer agreed with this notion: "Although Dropzone is virtually a rewrite of Defender, the quality of its graphics and sound make it far superior." The Commodore 64 version of the game was awarded a Gold Medal in issue 3 of ''

Zzap!64 ''Zzap!64'' was a computer games magazine covering games on the Commodore International series of computers, especially the Commodore 64 (C64). It was published in the UK by Newsfield Publications Ltd and later by Europress Impact. The magazine ...

'' magazine, with an overall rating of 95%.

Legacy

The sequel, ''Super Dropzone'', added new weapon types and end-level bosses. It is available for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (titled ''Super Dropzone'' on all packaging, but only ''Dropzone'' on the title screen),

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, ...

and PlayStation. Only the Game Boy Advance version saw a North American release; the others were European exclusives. A fully-playable port of the C64 version can be found in the PC version of '' Jimmy White's 2: Cueball'', also by Archer Maclean.

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite journal , title=Software Reviews , journal=Computer and Video Games , date=May 1985 , page=105 , url=https://archive.org/details/cvg-magazine-043/page/n103/mode/2up {{cite journal , title=I got the blues... , journal=Personal Computer World , date=July 1985 , page=209 , url=https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1985-07/page/208/mode/2up 1984 video games Acclaim Entertainment games Action video games Action-adventure games Atari 8-bit family games Commodore 64 games Fiction set on Io (moon) Game Boy Color games Game Boy games Horizontally scrolling shooters Nintendo Entertainment System games Game Gear games Single-player video games Video game clones U.S. Gold games Mindscape games Video games developed in the United Kingdom