Commodore 64 Longplay - DropZone
10Dropzone for the Commodore 64 developed by Archer Maclean of Arena Graphics and published by US Gold in 1984.
"t's the year 2085. Only a handful of people have survived the robot wars that rocked the Solar System. In a final desperate bid for survival a Tacheon propelled star cruiser has been developed on earth to transport survivors to a new star system. But the cruiser relies on rare lonian crystals for it's power: crystals which are only abundant on Jupiter's second moon Io. A moonbase established on Io is under constant attack by aliens from Jupiter. It is your mission to escort the men and their precious crystals safely from the surface of Io to the Dropzone where the landing pad is located. You are equipped with the latest pulse-laser back-pack system which will make you invisible and indestructible for short periods of time. You must succeed, the future of the human race depends on you alone!"
I've been wanting to longplay this for a while but put it off due to knowing how long it would take and with its being and endless game. With the recent passing of Archer Maclean I felt compelled to give it a go. Spoiler - I failed to complete it as it was really dragging on. I completed 80 of 99 levels but the video had desynced anyway half way through. Maybe one day ill give it another go but it hasn't gone to waste as I have uploaded what I have as a long gameplay video.
The game plays similar to arcade games like defender and is just as frustrating with its fast gameplay. The game has 99 levels and repeats levels 95-99 until all lives are lost. During the game you have a cloak which allows to you to kill enemies without getting hurt for a short time but you are not able to rescue the men running at the bottom of the screen. You also get a limited number of smart bombs to clear the screen. These are awarded after earning enough points during play. Lives are also awarded fairly regularly. Once one million points have been achieved you can no longer earn bonus lives or bombs.
This is the kind of game that in normal play would would probably spend 10 minutes with , get frustrated with it and move onto another game. It's completely bonkers to expect 99 levels to be achievable during normal play. The gameplay here is shown with save state abuse. While jetpack guy has to work against inertia and line up his shots perfectly, you are also contending with random and fast projectiles suddenly coming at you and those trailers are especially annoying. When an alien drops doe to attack one of the men at the bottom of the screen, they sound the whistle alarm to alert you. Annoyingly though, there is very little time to complete the rescue as the aliens are literally on top of them as you get the warning. I find this quite unfair. You can quickly lose control of the rescue centre if flying across the screen and not defending it.
If all the men are killed then the planet erupts and the volcanos start spitting out deadly rocks. I don't show this unfortunately until the end of this video where it desynced and an aspect of the gameplay I would try to show early on if I attempt to longplay in full again. Losing the bonus means more work building up to that one million points goal I was working towards at the time.
Overall its a well made game for the C64 in 1984. it moves and plays fast just like arcade games of the time. I got the C64 around 1990 and this style of gameplay was not fun for me even back then and I don't enjoy it now. Maybe if it had only 15-20 levels and i have the incentive to keep at it but as it stands I don't enjoy games that want to end your run as fast as possible. This might have kept the arcades alive but I don't need this at home.
00:00:00 Tape Loader
00:01:50 Title Screen
00:02:40 Game