Drone (Full PC Playthrough)

LINK TO AN ISO IMAGE OF THE ORIGINAL GAME CD for anybody who wants it: http://www.4shared.com/file/oBCtn6dO/...

Genre: Shoot 'em up
Platform: DOS
Developer: Pixelsplash Software
Publisher: Pixelsplash Software
Year: 1997

Ladies and gentlemen... this is my first full PC game playthrough! And, to be precise, a playthrough of one of my all-time favourites.

A little background on this game:

Once upon a time, in the town of Bethesda, Maryland (one of America's most highly educated communities - forget Baltimore!), there lived a longtime computer scientist by the name of John Amato, and his wife Cindy Vogan, an art designer. In early 1997, the two founded Pixelsplash Software, and devoted their combined talents to clever website design for third-party clients... and to the creation of their only game, Drone.

Described as a "truly unique PC shooter game", which is absolutely no idle boast, Drone puts YOU in the role of a pilot whose prime goal is to stop 6 deadly nuclear missiles, the game's titular Drones, before they reach the Earth and kill countless numbers of innocent civilians. You are armed with exploding-tip missile bullets that you use to destroy the menacing alien ships escorting the Drones, homing stingers used to take down the bosses and larger groups of ships, and the blue probes used to disarm the Drones.

I first discovered Drone many years back on an eGames CD-ROM my parents bought me at a drug store. IMHO, it was among THE BEST of the 151 games on that CD. Played it to no end when I was a young'un... and still love it to death today. I think the repetition is what contributes to the overall fun of this game... and to the replay value. Every time I destroy that mothership, I'm ALWAYS left wanting more! I can't decide what the best part of Drone is... is it very carefully disarming the Drones (a feature that most certainly sets this apart from other shmups)? The peculiar-looking pre-rendered 3D alien ships? Or is it the exciting, ear-grabbing stereo sound?

Also, most of you may be familiar with the later version found on eGames CDs, such as the aforementioned Masters' Edition 151 collection. That was a Windows/DirectX port released in 1999. Due to the fact that John Amato was having difficulties porting the game code from Watcom C/C++ to work with Microsoft's DirectX APIs, there are some notable differences - for instance, the Snake boss in level 5 was replaced with a repeat of the Air Tank boss from level 1, and the sound was folded down from two stereo channels to one mono channel. Meanwhile, what you see here in this video is the ORIGINAL MS-DOS VERSION from 1997, which unfortunately is pretty much impossible to find these days since at the time it was exclusively available as a direct order from Pixelsplash Software and never had a retail release. Luckily, I was able to contact John Amato himself and he was kind enough to provide me with an original, still-shrinkwrapped CD-ROM copy of the full, registered DOS version of the game! THANK YOU John for that... and also for sending me the version 1.02 patch, which is great since it has never been archived on the WayBack Machine.

In the mid-2000s, John and Cindy quit from the gaming scene together and rebranded themselves as J&C Studios, makers of O-scale train layouts.

Note: Played in DOSBox 0.74. Footage captured using its built-in video recorder, and edited together using trakAxPC. Video was made in March of 2012, but never uploaded until now!