Drop Off

Overview

Drop Off (JP: Drop Rock Hora Hora) is a puzzle game from Cream and published by Data East in Japan. In the US, the game was published by NEC directly, as was the case for many TurboGrafx-16 games. It was also added to the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007.

The story of Drop Off is to rescue a girl, Izumi, from a nightmare that is keeping her in a coma. A magical being called Muse helps Izumi's companion to fight the demons within her dream.

Gameplay

The game is a Breakout clone that also borrows elements of Taito's Bust-A-Move. Various fruits start slowly moving down the screen in bunches; in order to remove them (touching them with the paddle is instant death) the player must use the ball to bash the fruit and remove them. If the player removes a fruit that is the sole link connecting two groups of fruit, the lower group will all fall at the same time. The player is best served by removing these lynch pins to make things easier on themselves. The player also has a protective shield that stops the ball leaving the screen, but this shield will eventually vanish if hit enough times by the ball.