Archer Maclean has passed away

[pseudografx]

Author of Dropzone and International Karate for the Atari 8-bit has died on December 17.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/archer-maclean-dropzone-ik-jimmy-white’s-whirlwind-snooker-has-died.668434/

 

Edited December 26, 2022 by pseudografx
Corrected date of death

[Goochman]

RIP - very talented coder.

[www.atarimania.com]

That's very sad, he was still young. What a great ambassador for Atari users.

[adam242]

Very sad news. His 8-bit titles are among the Atari's very best. I also enjoy his Pool Paradise for the Gamecube.

[snicklin]

2 hours ago, pseudografx said:

Author of Dropzone and International Karate for the Atari 8-bit has died yesterday.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/archer-maclean-dropzone-ik-jimmy-white’s-whirlwind-snooker-has-died.668434/

 

Oh dear, no. Too young. Funny man, met him at Wolverhampton where he did a talk a few years back. Loved his quotes about Jimmy White.

 

Right then, I am going to do a Rastaconverter picture in his honour. I took a real picture the other week which can be converted....

[+MrFish]

Running World Karate Championship in demo mode right now...

 

Bye Archer, and thanks for two great Atari masterpieces.

 

    

 

    

 

    

 

    

 

    

 

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[oky2000]

RIP Archer Maclean, a great loss for us all whatever computer we played his games on. Very talented, made great games on many different machines. Also had a "£9 note" he would carry around with him,  fun guy. 

 

He had apparently been fighting cancer for years.

[Rybags]

RIP Archer.

 

Probably the best freelance programmer by a big margin back in the day.

[R0ger]

IK is just great. IMHO it's on par with Prince of the Persia for animation quality. And the fact it's in character mode is just mind blowing. Taking the limitations of the platform .. and throwing them out of the window ! That's how it's done !

[_The Doctor__]

Worked on numerous titles. Thirteen titles all by himself, that's all the code, all the graphics, all the sound, all him. Almost all smash hits. 11 charted #1.  He was also one of the first programmers to take the big guys to court for screwing about with the rules and royalties. Can you say Ferrari, Maclean could and did. Made his own rules, and was no fool. Cancer can go f*ck off !!  Hat's off to the top of crop.

[erichenneke]

I really hate to hear this. International Karate was, and is still to this day, on my regular rotation for the Atari 8 bits. Definitely a go-to game, and quite a joystick destroyer too!!!  ...the ultimate compliment!    Drop Zone, yeah, wow.  The performance of Drop Zone is still a head scratcher as to how he squeezed that performance out of the machine, and it's just so darn hard because of that... but what an amazing game!  

[MichaG]

He have just played Dropzone in this year's HSC... 😢

 

[oky2000]

I think what put Archer up there with the best of the best on multiformat development scene is not just coding but his ability to think how to use the advantages of the hardware in a machine. The complex method to make the large fighters in IK on the A8 is a classic example. But adding gravity and Choplifter style rescue gameplay to Dropzone made it much more than a Defender clone in its own right. Even following the white ball in his Snooker and Pool 3D games gave you a real sense of movement. Not just a great coder but a great game designer too IMO, a rare combination. 

[Heaven/TQA]

At 4:00 he is talking about how much Atari IK is in IK+ on C64

 

 

[Heaven/TQA]

Running in demo mode right now…

[Dinadan67]

Dropzone was my first game on Atari 8bit, i bought the tape together with my 800XL+1010 in 1985. I still play this game from time to time. R.I.P. Archer!

[JLsoft]

World Karate Championship (IK) got sooo much play from me, and its music (by Rob Hubbard) is how I found out about "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence"'s theme long ago.

 

 

R.I.P., Mr. Maclean

 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2022 by JLsoft

[Mclaneinc]

 

That is such a crap set of news to wake up to, I would not say I was a mate of his but he always recognised me at the shows and had a good old laugh, I remember him looking at my trade badge when chatting and he said, I brought my disk drive from you lot and I said, yeah, from me, I did all the forms and sold it to you. After that we'd always chat at the shows. Such a shame, a year younger than me and taken by the horrible disease, as Doc said, a powerhouse of a coder, he did it all.

 

Truly sad...And as he told me and a mate, only once you master the C64 Dropzone are you ready for the challenge of the Atari version..

 

RIP Archer, you left us a legacy of fantastic games to remember you by..

[+slx]

RIP, much too young to go. I was amazed by Dropzone's amazingly smooth graphics BITD and need to look at IK which I don't recall playing in the 80's.

 

This site states that he passed away after a long battle with cancer.

Here's some more about him.

 

[+DarkLord]

He also played a mean game of pool on the ST... 

 

R.I.P

 

[mimo]

I was lucky enough to meet him briefly about 12 years ago at a Retro Computer Museum Leicester open day.

Nice bloke, and gone way too soon 

[sargie]

Every game he made just oozed quality. Along with Paul Woakes as one of the best A8 coders.

[Mclaneinc]

Him and Woakes were good mates...Totally agree re the quality. He was the golden child of that era...

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Wow, so young...tragic.

 

R.I.P.

[oky2000]

Dropzone on a friend's Atari 800 is the first time I got to see Archer's work too, so naturally I put it on my 'to buy' list straight away for my machine too. I think it was the Summer of 86 me and my friend walked into the shop and bought International Karate for our respective machines, we went home and played both versions. Great days. I can only think of Shaun Southern's Lotus II on ST and Amiga being another developer where one person develops a system pushing game for two completely different machines with as much care and attention to both. It's was a rare talent indeed, a breed apart.