Archer Maclean has passed away, aged 60
Developer of IK+ and Jimmy White's Snooker
Archer Maclean, the developer of several classic games for early home computers, has passed away. Maclean was 60 years old.
Maclean's passing was noted by members of the retro games community. "Shocked and saddened to hear that legendary C64 programmer Archer Maclean passed away yesterday. He produced some of the machine’s greatest games, including International Karate and my all-time favorite shooter on the system, Dropzone. My heart goes out to his family.", wrote games journalist Jaz Rignall on Twitter.
In the '80s, Maclean developed fighting games International Karate and sequel IK+, before developing Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker and Archer Maclean's Pool and several sequels in the '90s.
Maclean's final releases were Archer Maclean's Mercury, a launch game on PSP, and battle racer Wheelspin for Wii in 2009. In more recent years, he had written for Retro Gamer magazine.
I grew up playing Maclean's games. We had IK+ for the Amstrad CPC and it was, I think, the first fighting game I ever played. I then spent many happy hours playing Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker and Archer Maclean's Pool on Amiga (both games were also released on MS-DOS). Given the naming convention of each game, as a kid I simply assumed Maclean was a famous pool player, rather than a game developer.
