Drop Off

~ DROP OFF ~

Data East / NEC

HuCard

1990

I've always hated Breakout and its many imitators. The only title along those lines I'd ever enjoyed was an ancient LCD handheld game called Spitball Sparky, which starred a likable Q*bert-like character and played better than its "paddle"-featuring peers. Of course, I haven't had the pleasure of giving SS a go since I was about seven years old; if it's actually crap and my memories are horribly distorted by nostalgia, well, I'm none the wiser. And this didn't bode well for Drop Off: I'm inclined to despise its ilk to begin with, and there wasn't any chance it could compete with the masterpiece that I recall Spitball Sparky being. With things looking grim, DO actually brought a quick smile to my face with its opening cinematics, which can boast of very cool music and very goofy text that relays a Psychosis-like "go inside a mind" plot.

The weaving of this intriguing tale continues with melodramatic between-realm intermissions. It's funny: the original PCE version featured mangled English during these scenes, so whoever localized the title decided to fix that... and still came up with gibberish.

So the story stuff is entertaining, but then there's the game itself. Well, let's try to get through this quickly. You control a blue thing and destroy objects with a ball. You can "open up" your blue thing to deflect the ball at a sharper angle. There are plenty of different objects to obliterate: apples, crystals, eyeballs, amoebas, and so on. If you hit the right spot in a chain and break off a bunch of objects at once, you're rewarded with bonus points. The "interesting" thing is that the chains of objects gradually descend. This is no Space Invaders; you don't have to annihilate every item to finish a round. You just have to hang in there until the chains have fully descended. But if an object touches you, you die. And if the ball bashes its way through the floor, you die. You can repel the chains a limited number of times to create a little breathing room, and a steamroller-type thing occasionally shows up to perform floor repair.

That's about all there is to it, aside from the occasional instance of silliness.

Drop Off is not excellent. It's not a great concept and it's not executed particularly well. But it's often said to be a disaster. Well, even though I was predisposed to hate it, I really can't say that I did. It gets kind of intense, I suppose, when items come down and crowd you. The music really is nice and made me want to like the game, as did the amusing story. I came in expecting about a billion levels, but there are only sixteen, which is just fine. And it does have something even Spitball Sparky doesn't: a final boss.