Another sequel, and this time again from Archer MacLean, who was also working on the sequel to IK+ (known as IK Deluxe or IK++).
Dropzone 2 was started very much earlier than IK, and took the idea of the original game and added the likes of craters that you could drop into and explore various caverns in a huge system which was to be developed.
Sounds like these were just ideas mainly, though meeting Archer at CGEUK in 2005 confirmed that something of the game was started. It could well be possible to see some of this work in the future, with Archer offering to put some demos out for people to look at.
Archer did speak to Retro Gamer magazine in later years and gave a little more away about the game, going into caverns and travelling across warps. Most of the ideas later went into Super Dropzone on the SNES.
It is assumed that US Gold could have released this again, though Archer had fallen out with the company over royalties. We think that it was in very early stages when it was cancelled. We don’t know just yet why the game was cancelled, but unfortunately Archer passed away in 2022, so it isn’t possible to find out.
We have been archiving many of Archer’s work disks, and so far we haven’t found any code – but we have found graphics in Atari and C64 format. Here are some sprites we feel may have been intended for the game (see gallery). There are some background graphics we’ve also found, which we will aim to recover soon (in .SLD format – anyone know what they are from?).
More soon we hope on this title….
Contributions: Dasse
Supporting content
Gallery
Creator speaks
From Retro Gamer issue 106, Archer Maclean says:
“Dropzone 2 for the C64 had quite a lot of work done on it in 1986/7 but never saw the light of day for all sorts of reasons. It opened up the idea of being able to descend down into caverns beneath the moonscape and rid the inner chambers of infestation problems, including laying time bombs that needed you to get back out before all hell broke loose. Plus it had warp jumps to other planetoids. A lot of these ideas resurfaced in the 1992/3 SNES ‘Super Dropzone’, licensed to Psygnosis.”
Update history
19/09/24 – Tidied up the page and added some sprite images.
If you look at interview he did with Zzap64, Xmas Special, 1985, P78+79, you’ll see him talk Dropzone II, where he wasn’t sure if it’d be a good game or not (and bemoans C64 lack of speed), he said he had all the ideas for Dropzone II, but wasn’t sure IFC64 would be able to handle game logic in as much detail etc.
Also talks of how he could knock up a ‘proper’ version of Robotron on C64+A8, in 6 weeks, sell it for budget price.
Might be worth getting interview up here for addt.content?.
Thanks yet again Ross – added. The Robotron mention is interesting too, though I doubt anything was ever started. I still think there needs to be a decent Robotron sorted for the C64.
He also mentioned (in an interview with The One, i think..) he’d looked at the possibility of an doing enhanced version of Dropzone for the ST/Amiga.