astronaut c64 Commodore 64 game

Before anyone starts complaining, yes the Atari version is the original and arguably better (in the same way that Harder, Faster, More Challenging Q*Bert upped the ante by comparison), but this is the version I have spent the majority of time playing.

Atarisoft should really have hired Archer to produce its official versions of Defender and Stargate. Instead he took his original design, changed the graphics around to make the player a jetpack astronaut, had the planet Io spew antimatter when all the humans were dead and called it Dropzone. Smart bombs and cloaking device are present and correct, and trust me, you are going to need to use both of them a lot to complete this mission…

The major change to gameplay was enacted by having our flying hero collect and deposit the wandering humans back to base instead of merely protecting them. This creates an entirely different dynamic, one that forces the player to fight, defend and collect. With capacity at one, many trips are needed to return all the humans safely back home. If the full complement of eight humans are not present and none are left outside, then the alien aggressors occasionally launch an attack on the base to kill another human; this can be countered by the sneaky tactic of carrying about the last human until the end of the wave before taking them home!

Dropzone even on the C64 is not an easy game to score high on. It will take patience, concentration and much skill to achieve the ultimate target of one million points. Your reward for passing that mark is earning no more extra lives! Control is perfect, providing you use a quality joystick, with excellent precision and positioning available when blasting the alien hordes. And boy will you need it…