Archer Maclean has passed away

[Mclaneinc]

Yeah, Lotus II was a head turner (music was ok too)

 

People who didn't JUST port, but looked at the host machine and used it as much as possible.. Andrew Braybrook was another similar coder back then, when he took on the Amiga he actually went over to either Germany or Finland and learnt off the hackers (not as weird as it sounds, most of the C64 demo coders went on to the Amiga and Andrew was already mates with most of them via the C64 scene, and who best to tell you the secrets of a machine, hackers and demo coders) etc to use the Amiga, the result, Fire and Ice, still one of the finest platformers on the Amiga. We were lucky with these folk, they had the clout to say to a studio, "Hold on, I can upgrade this game, but it will need more time" and because of who it was they got that time and we got better games.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Mclaneinc

[Steril707]

Sad news really. 

Loved all of his early games on C64 and A800.

 

[Heaven/TQA]

Btw. What is the actual status of the IK+ port project?

[oky2000]

18 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

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

Andrew Braybrook spoke fondly of Archer, said he was a fun guy and mentioned that he kept a "£9" note he printed himself in his wallet as a joke. Also quite a humble guy too.

(think $9 dollar bill etc). 

 

I found this link to Archer Maclean and Jimmy White on a Gamesmaster challenge

 

 

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by oky2000

[Mclaneinc]

13 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

Andrew Braybrook spoke fondly of Archer, said he was a fun guy and mentioned that he kept a "£9" note he printed himself in his wallet as a joke. Also quite a humble guy too.

(think $9 dollar bill etc). 

 

 

Yeah, I saw Andy's twitter message, they were the elites, neither had to worry about studio problems.

 

Apparently there's a fair few stories re Archer and Jimmy, when Jimmy wasn't playing tournaments he 'liked to enjoy himself', take what you want from that, I heard him and Jimmy had some good old nights out. Back in my Pool and snooker days I played in a lot of tournaments and I was lucky enough to play a frame with Jimmy, such a talent, wiped the floor with me. Later on I moved to Ilford and the resident profs in my local Snooker club were Ken Docherty and Ronnie O'Sullivan, had a joke frame with Ronnie (when you could get him away from playing cards), so much fun because all I did was watch as her cleared most of the table first visit.

[+StaxX28]

International Karete is my favorite fighting game of all !

Rest in peace Archer.

[Mclaneinc]

Archer Mcleans Pool is my fave for reasons clear above, loved it on the Amiga, a nice 68030 board in there just to smooth it more..Spent WAY too much time on this, oddly enough I liked Dropzone but I like the Defender arcade port more..

[oky2000]

The difference between Dropzone and Defender/Stargate is almost as much as the difference between Gauntlet and Druid really. 

 

I think on the Atari my favourite game of his was International Karate, probably the same on the C64. 

[FifthPlayer]

On 12/27/2022 at 11:33 AM, Mclaneinc said:

Archer Mcleans Pool is my fave for reasons clear above, loved it on the Amiga, a nice 68030 board in there just to smooth it more..Spent WAY too much time on this, oddly enough I liked Dropzone but I like the Defender arcade port more..

Honestly I also like the Defender arcade port more even it is sometimes a little slowdown-y on the A8.  I think my issue with Dropzone, technically impressive as it is, was that it was just too difficult for me to play.  Then only recently I learned the game was targeted for PAL and plays too quickly on NTSC machines like the one I was using BITD.

Edited December 29, 2022 by FifthPlayer