I recently had a few evenings spare, so I set about writing this little game for the ZX81. Introducing ‘Chopper Drop 3000’, a game of skill and chance.

The original Chopper Drop was a 1k game that I wrote around 1983. I remember as a kid being so excited when it was later published in the New Zealand computer magazine called Bits & Bytes. I found the original game in an online scan of the May 1984 edition of Bits & Bytes. Thanks to Terry Stewart the entire Bits & Bytes collection can be downloaded from here in PDF format.

With some help from Siggi who streamlined some of my code, and to Andre*** who got the code to compile in Mcoder II, Chopper Drop 3000 is now a far more impressive game than the original. It takes up about 16k of memory, far more than the original 1k version. The idea is simple, drop bombs on enemy tanks before they destroy you, The more tanks you destroy, the higher your score, but also the more difficult it becomes.

One of my goals was to incorporate some simple animation, and It actually works surprisingly well, especially when the helicopter spins left or right. The explosions look great too.

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My attempt at a standard set (POKE 59468,12)

The game was never released on cassette, but I wanted to design a cassette cover for it and keep the feel authentic to the time period.

Video recorded using zxsp emulator, showing Chopper Drop 3000 gameplay.