It has been quite a long time since we last reported on a new arcade prototype being found, and to clarify, when we cover this, we usually mean a game that was never released. The last time we had such a report was about an Atari Slot 4 game that was found<\/a>, but this was from 2023; coincidentally enough, the past couple of prototype stories have also involved Atari, such as a proto basketball game<\/a> and the controversy about Akka Arrh<\/em> winding up on MAME<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not all of our proto stories have involved Atari-made protos<\/a>, although today does have an Atari connection. Let\u2019s read into Dropzone Arcade<\/em>.<\/p>\n Dropzone<\/a><\/em> is a Defender-style game designed by the late Archer Maclean<\/a>, and published in Europe under U.S. Gold back in 1984. First published for Atari 400\/800 computers<\/a>, he also made a port for the Commodore 64, although it did not throw as much around on the screen as the Atari version did. Copies of the game did end up for sale in the States, although from an interview that Archer did<\/a> before his death, it sounds like he had no part in it, thus the game wasn\u2019t optimized. It was also ported to the NES, Game Boy\/GB Color, Game Gear; it also received a sequel for the SNES\/PS1.<\/p>\n The game takes place in 2085 after a war of robots on Earth (you can see how the author was very<\/em> influenced by Eugene Jarvis\u2019 work, although he admits as much), and humanity has moved to Jupiter\u2019s volcanic moon of Io. Playing much like Defender, you must rescue men on the moon\u2019s surface, all while dealing with a variety of nasty alien invaders.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fun, but comes with a high level of difficulty, in part due to your character sprite being so large and the whole thing is a hit box. That, combined with the game\u2019s fast speed and small enemies, means you need a bit of practice to play it well.<\/p>\n Per that interview I linked to above, Archer wanted to see the game in a proper arcade cabinet. He coded the coin feature into the game (activated by pushing up on the Port 2 joystick), but he never moved forward in publishing it for an unknown reason. There wasn\u2019t even a hint that it was going to get a coin-op release, aside from Archer expressing the desire to make it happen.<\/p>\n Per Games That Weren\u2019t<\/a>, they found the coin-op version among materials that they had obtained from the late author. They also kindly put the ROMs up, although they are in ATX format, which my Atari hardware doesn\u2019t like (I believe I could get it to work if I were able to get those copied onto a 5.25\u2033 floppy, but I don\u2019t have any way to make that happen). Someone also put one version of the game into an arcade cabinet by themselves, although this doesn\u2019t appear to be the Atari version that was discovered(I\u2019m not familiar with all versions, but this looks nice enough that it could be someone putting Dropzone 40th Anniversary<\/a><\/em> or Super Dropzone<\/em> into a cabinet):<\/p>\n \nWhat Was Dropzone?<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nDropzone Arcade<\/h2>\n