PROGRAMMER PROFILE¢¢CUE: ARCHER MACLEAN¢by Gordon Houghton (ST Review 11/92)¢¢ At the age of 12, Archer Maclean was heavily into electronics. He started with radios in matchboxes, line-following robots, wristwatch calculators, and "all sorts of miniature gadgets", before building his own computers. In 1978 he saw a magazine which had a listing for a version of Mastermind in 150 lines of code; dissatisfied with it, he wrote his own in just 11 (very heavily compressed) lines.¢¢ However, computer games didn't really bite until he went to a trade show in 1979, as he explains: "I was working for an electronics company and the Ingersol stand was right next to ours. They had this funny little machine, a plastic thing with plastic keys, and it was the Atari 400. It had this game on it called Star Raiders, which was just absolutely awesome - all in 8K. That was enough for me to go out and buy 800 pounds worth of Atari, and a cartidge for 32 pounds. I remember breaking quite a few joysticks and a chair playing it."¢¢ After taking a degree course entitled Computer and Control Systems, Instrumentation and Electronics at the beginning of the 1980s, he went to the PCW show in 1982, armed with a demo disk of his own Defender clone for the Atari 400/800, running at 50Hz. Within minutes of this game being displayed on the Atari stand he was fielding job offers.¢¢ However, it took another three years before his first commercial release - the shoot-'em-up classic, Dropzone - appeared. From that moment his career has gone from one award to another, with International Karate, IK+. and Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker all winning acclaim.¢¢Games and Hobbies¢¢ These days he plays more coin-ops than home computer games, and still favours the Eugene Jarvis/Williams classics from a dozen years ago: "Stargate, Defender and Robotron - they were all great inspirations in terms of the quality and snazzy graphic effects."¢¢ A couple of years ago when the classic car market was booming, he bought and sold a few "pretty exotic" motor cars. His interests don't end with cars and cash, though: "I used to like playing squash, and I've done some more unusual things, such as gliding and flying. I'm a big fan of Tom and Jerry cartoons too, especially the ones that were produced by Fred Quimby."¢¢ One of his current hobbies involves fiddling around with gadgets. "I've got a house stuffed with them: four TVs ranging from 30 inches to three inches, a tape recorder that records on sub-miniatur cassettes and is just a little bit bigger than the actual tape, a laser disc player - I love playing around with lasers. I even have a pocket-sized pen laser which is seriously useful for wearing out cats in my living room."¢¢3D Pool¢¢ Balls, however, are his current obsession. "The first thing to say about Pool," explains Archer, "is that it obviously shares a very similar user/graphic interface with Jimmy White's Snooker. That was always the intention. However, it does have a lot more in it than Snooker."¢¢ Archer hasn't spared on his trademark, either - those special features such as a player's trousers falling down (IK+) or funny faces on the balls (Jimmy White).¢¢ The faces make another appearance in Pool, "but I've also got eyes blinking in the background when you're not doing anything - evil ones, nice ones, smiling, frowning." He explains his motivation: "I like watching films with things going on in the background that you shouldn't really be seeing. For example, in the background at an inventors' show in Gremlins there's the time machine from the HG Wells film; and later on it's gone."¢¢In The Beginning...¢¢ All of Archer's four games to date have been number one somewhere in the world. There have been twelve different versions on eight different machines, and all have won some sort of award, beginning with Dropzone in 1984. This was his first published game, on Atari 8-bit and C64, and it was all down to a "flash of inspiration". It is an impressive two-way horizontal scroller, featuring a jetman patrolling a Defender-style environment in search of lost scientists, and is still one of the most playable shoot-'em-ups made for an 8-bit machine. It has just been produced on the NES and Gameboy.¢¢Karate Chip¢¢ International Karate was Archer's follow-up to Dropzone and was the big hit of 1986, reaching number one in the US. It was published by System 3 and featured a smoothly-animated one-on-one competition set against a variety of international backgrounds. Maclean wrote the Commodore and Atari 8-bit versions, but was not responsible for the ST. "That was done by a bunch of Hungarian programmers and bears no relation to the one I did."¢¢¢THE MACLEAN COLLECTION:¢¢Dropzone (1984-85)¢¢International Karate (1986)¢¢IK+ (1987-88)¢¢Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker (1991)¢¢3D Pool (late 1992)¢¢¢-----------------------------------¢¢¢Ed:- The Atari 8-bit versions of Dropzone and International Karate are still available. Derek Fern (021-353-5730) sells Dropzone on disk (US Import) for only five pounds. You can also find it on the US Gold compilation cassette Shoot-'Em-Ups along with Super Zaxxon, Blue Max 2001 and Fort Apocalypse. This cassette is harder to find (try Miles Better Software).¢¢ International Karate is available from the Page 6 Accessory Shop (0785-213928) for only 4.95. At this price, it is an essential addition to your collection. Both IK and Dropzone are true Atari 8-bit classics! Thank-you Archer Maclean. Now, when is the 8-bit version of Jimmy White's Snooker released? I wish.¢
