![]() ![]() ![]() I could name and describe all the enemies, but the attract screen lists them anyway, and I don't want to spoil your fun. You have to collect all eight of them by sitting on them - a strange feature rarely mentioned in reviews of the game - and returning them to base before the bad guys get annoyed and drop androids on them. The protection part involves a bunch of stupid scientists oblivious to all this danger, who have absent-mindedly taken a stroll on the planet's surface. If you think getting to a million points will shake them off, think again. ![]() These enemies are seriously mean, and they *never* leave you alone. The survival bit is obvious - you're a jetman-cum-astronaut stuck on a strange horizontally-scrolling moon, and from the very beginning you're assaulted by wave upon wave of enemies. There are two basic aims: survival and protection. So what's it all about? And why, every time I play it, do I feel like running up to people in the street to tell them how good it is? The second question is easy to answer: I don't get out enough. It's not surprising that Dropzone was later converted to the Super Nintendo (complete with end-of-level bosses), and most recently resurfaced in a slightly easier version on the Gameboy Color. It not only echoed the better aspects of the Defender coin-op, it was actually a much more enjoyable game: better scrolling, more detailed graphics, more compelling gameplay, smarter and more numerous enemies, and a smoother learning curve - all of which created a timeless classic. So when Dropzone arrived, it was a particularly timely addition to the shoot 'em up fold. The crap games bore such inspired names as 'Guardian', or 'Mr Rubbish the Defender Clone', and were about as exciting as sticking your head into a cow pat. Those exceptions were usually created by Jeff Minter - fast, furious, and wonderfully weird blasters featuring mutant camels, strange sheep and psychedelic sound effects. The name Dropzone was not settled on until shortly before the game went gold.There were plenty of Defender clones around before Dropzone came along, but with a few exceptions they were all crap. However, the 64 is still a respectable BMW316. It is visually, sonically etc., identical and about 12K shorter. 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. Those who can reach Megastar status on the 64 should have had enough practice to attempt an Atari supervised Dropzone mission. The 64 Dropzone is about 46k long and consists of 15,000 lines of sparsely commented code with around 350 subroutines and around 3000 labels. ![]() Of the C64 version of the game, MacLean said: It was then converted to the Commodore 64 (C64) by MacLean himself. MacLean purchased one of the first Atari 800's to be imported into the UK and started writing the game. The ranks awarded to players at the end of a game are (in order): Sometimes the aliens will carry lethal androids instead, which must be avoided. The player must shot the enemy aliens and catch the falling scientists. The aliens capture scientists walking along the ground. Players must elude or engage various aliens-some slow, others faster-and return the scientists to the base's eponymous dropzone. Players control the hero trying to rescue the scientists on a horizontally side-scrolling game field. The gameplay is much in the style of Defender, as well as Stargate, Scramble and even Robotron: 2084. 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. On the surface of Jupiter's moon, Io, a scientific research base is under attack by aliens. ![]()
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