Drop Off was developed by G-Mode for the TurboGrafx16 back in 1990. The game unveiled with quite an epic story, but was plagued down by an irrelevant Arkanoid-styled puzzle stages.

As a man descends into a deep slumber, you dreampt of magical being that tells you your dearly beloved has been cursed by a demon that holds her mind and dreams captive. As the hero, you must enter her dreams and strike down the demon who has her inner body hostage. Admittedly, I loved the plot and I prepared myself for an epic adventure. It wasn’t until I found out that Drop Off was a puzzle game that copies the likes of Arkanoid, except in a much worse fashion.

In Drop Off, you control a small round platform that has to repel a ball and destroy descending fruit. That is exactly what I’m saying: apples, strawberries, watermelons and more. As the hero, you must protect yourself by eliminating as many (or probably all) the fruit as it falls upon you and the platform your standing on. Despite how simple it all sounds, Drop Off has so many issues that it almost gives the player no desire to continue.

The problems all fall on the gameplay and how it’s built. In Arkanoid, your platform started off with a decent size, increasing when collecting items. However, Drop Off gives you a tiny platform that barely holds any surface area, resulting in misses and screw ups. Combining the elements of Space Invaders only makes the game suffer more in difficulty. Your little ball doesn’t have the efficiency to destroy the obstacles, so the player will resort to rewinding the distance of the fruits, which is very helpful. What’s even worse is that there is no strategy involved. You can literally camp out in one spot and let your ball do all the work. Gaps will appear in the ground if they sustain too much damage, but you won’t care because destroying fruits in one path is more important than running left and right destroying all of them. Sure you have to twitch your thumbs a bit, but Drop Off will more likely have you yawn than break a sweat.

Drop Off is a low quality title that fools people with it’s epic plot. It does a horrible job as a Breakout/Arkanoid clone and I don’t expect anyone to “drop off” money for this game.

Overall Score: 3/10