The highlight of this game is when you play in “3D” mode, you get to witness actual battles between the pieces. I love watching the castle eat the queen, very cool. Each different combination of pieces have a unique battle, which is very fun to watch. It’s almost worth losing a few of the games so you can see all the different wars going on between pieces. Apparently one set is red and the other is blue, but it’s really pink and blue when I play. Gotta love those oldschool graphics.

If you aren’t into the whole waiting for battles then there is also a 2D mode, where you can look down on the pieces, very old school normal chess. Not half as exciting as full on Battle Chess.

A very impressive feature of this game was the ability play over a modem. Yes, back in 1989! How awesome is that? You can go and battle with your neighbour.

There’s another lovely feature, called “Setup Board”. You can arrange the pieces how you want, and then you play. I guess it’s a bit like cheating, but it’s a good way to see the different battles. Plus it’s good to test out certain moves. Probably helpful if you’re learning, I only used it to watch the pieces fight!

There are difficulty levels, from Novice through to Level 9. You can also set a time limit for moves. So, there are a lot of awesome features in this game. They really did think through what people would want to do in this game, obviously a lot of user requirements were gathered.

The sound effects are brilliant. No need to settle for lame sounds anymore! You can live it up with swords, knights clinking around in armour etc. Adds another dimension.

If you like chess, are good at chess and just like watching little wars, then you’re going to love this game. If you don’t like chess, then it might help you get into chess!

Before we’re getting into nostalgia, lets talk about this golfing game. Its actually my first experience into the sport and golf genre on the pc. It was just fun going through the golf courses with a couple of friends, going in turns, trying to get as low as possible under par. Well usually it was just trying to get as low as possible with the points, because we never made it under par. Only with luck. Yes, this is another multiplayer game on the same computer, also known as Hot Seat. But at that time that term wasnt invented yet. So we just went in turns and hit our balls

In the game you can choose three different difficulties, ranging from kids until pro. Actually I never recognized any difference in difficulty between those three settings, but perhaps I could be wrong. Next you can choose the number of holes you like to play, 18, 36, 54 or 72. Well, when you’re playing with four people, you could be playing a single game for hours and hours if you play all the 72 holes. Its already playing for hours when you’re playing single player. So I usually just pick playing 18 holes. Its just enough for a quick game.

You usually try to get under par, or if that doesnt work, on par. If even that doesnt work, we’ll just keep on playing until you’re so embarrased that you stop playing all together. You have a number of wood and iron sticks to choose from, then just whack the ball into the right direction. Well you obviously have to counter balance for the wind speed, or your ball will fly off the screen, into the trees, the rough, the bunker or into the water. If you keep your ball onto the fairway, everything will be okay and you got your game under or on par. The lower your score, the better you do!

The graphics are limited to 16 colors EGA in a resolution of 320×200. I think it just looks reasonable for a 1988 game, although theres not too much detail. Maybe its just good, to keep a clear look onto the ball into the field. Its also possible to play the game in 4 color CGA and then it will use two palettes. The cyan/purple/white/black scheme for the menus, green/red/brown/blue scheme for in-game. Just like a Sierra AGI adventure. Its looking very retro, and I just love to play it that way. When the game is ‘rendering’ the golf course, you see it getting drawed. Layer for layer, and trees are getting added as the last layer. On an XT it takes a while to draw, although I found that fascinating. On DosBox, you still see it getting drawed, although its much faster than on a real old computer I think its nice to watch that. It does that with every ‘scene’ though, so every view has to be re-rendered. For some, annoying as heck, for me, kinda nostalgic. I just love it.

The sound is pretty awesome for its time. It was one of the very first PC games actually playing digital sound effects and speech over the PC Speaker. They called the technology RealSound. When you start the game and you’re in the main screen, you hear birds singing. When you start the game and you’re actually in the game, you’ll hear crickets chirping randomly and when you’re playing on a course with water surrounding it, you will hear frogs croaking at random times. It really sets the mood. When you’re playing the game and hitting the ball just right and it lands on the fairway, you’ll hear the reporter making remarks. Although the reporters vocabulary is somewhat limited, its still nice for a game that old. Try hitting the ball into the water, I love it when the ball disappears and you’ll hear a splash The sounds are making this game definately a great game. Because most the games and applications at that time were limited at making the pc speaker just beep one voice at a time, this game sets the golfing mood so much better with the digital sounds! When you’re putting your ball, and put it right into the hole, you will hear a public applause. Even though you dont see any people surrounding you. They must be your imaginary friends

This game is just about winning and stragically choosing your sticks and checking the wind speed and slamming the ball at the right speed and angle. Do it alone or do it with friends. Its more fun with friends anyhow. Its a good laugh garantueed. Just having fun with this fairly easy golfing game. It will keep you entertained, but the longer the games get, the sooner you will go bored. Its nice for a change, but not for playing hours and hours at a time.

The first game I ever played on C64, although this is for PC. It was cool, I even still have the cassette at home that still works in my old Amstrad. Hehe, you would think I was a fanatic. I get déj� vu when I play catacomb because of this game! It was an excellent foundation layer for the dungeon crawler games though.

This game has multi and single player. You pick your own character, and the others pick theirs. When you start this game you chose from the following four characters:

Thor the Warrior:
He’s the big man. Takes a bit to knock him out, but he doesn’t have any special magic powers. He also moves a bit slow.

Merlin the Wizard:
Touché! Well, you couldn’t very well have a Wizard and not call him Merlin I guess! Merlin is a cool character, he has strong magic abilities, and can kick some arse. He cant really do much when he’s being hit on the head, as he’s a very fragile character and its better to kill everyone around you before they get too close and smack him.

Thyra the Valkyrie:
This was the character that I always used. I guess that’s because I am a girl =). She’s tough, she’s powerful, has magic. Plus she looks dang good in a skimpy costume! What more could you want? She moves relatively fast and has the best of all the characters rolled into one I think.

Questor the Elf:
He can use magic, and can hit people pretty hard. But he’s pretty fragile again, and his best characteristic is that he is the fastest. Which is good when you need to get away as he’s got stuff-all armor. But when surrounded with nowhere to go, who you gonna call?
This game is great, you go through many levels, gathering treasure and potions and killing the dungeon monsters. It’s so much fun. There are many dungeons to go through, and if you’ve played Catacomb, then you’ll pick this game up really easy, as this game inspired all like games.

I guess the one bummer is when you are playing multi player and you get caught in different screens and get stuck, as the screen just isn’t wide enough for you both to go back and get together again! That used to cause a lot of resets when Sarah and I used to play it!

You MUST download this game and play it. It’s excellent and totally rocks hard! I love it!!!

Ooh, scary I remember playing this game way back on the C64. It was a lot of fun then, and still is a lot of fun now on the PC

Another one of my much loved side-scrolling platform games. You can climb up and down things, and go onto different levels etc. But you still go from left to right jumping around and killing all the baddies, trying to make it to the end of the level. Sweeet!

Your enemies are scary monsters that come out of graves and other ominous places, such as zombies, ghosts, bats and icky things. You are the trusty knight who slays these hideous beasts and goes around doing the general kickass job he’s supposed to do! You can collect various things to make you stronger and aid in your battle to get to the end of the game.

I was just reading that to complete the game you have to go back to the beginning and go right through again on a harder level. You have to complete it twice in total to actually complete it. Man, talk about rough! I never even made it through once! This game is HARD! So if you are sick of all the way-too-easy games, and you think you are the bee’s knees then maybe you should try this game out

Pretty good-looking game considering it is 14 years old! Great colours, and the monsters all look scary and you look like the hero you’re supposed to be Typical PC speaker sounds.

Turned out to be a very cool PC game and everyone should give it a go, especially if you never got to have a turn on the C64, because it’s a great game and a very wicked challenge.

Ninjas rock! You know it’s true!

The Last Ninja however sucks large amounts of buttock. Surely his elite martial arts training extended to “how not to die when coming within 3 feet of water” or “how not to miss a jump just because you were one micron off”.

Arsehead!

Anyway, your clan (ninja clan? who knows) has been brutaly murdered and it’s up to you to avenge them.. yadda yadda yadda. The game is an action/adventure hybrid that takes place from an isometric viewpoint across a faux-japanese landscape (the effect works well actualy). You must jump (waaaaay too much emphasis on this) fight and solve puzzles in order to reap bloody vengence on your enemies. Speaking of which, one area that Last Ninja does excel in is weaponry. Along with regular punching and kicking you can get access to a sword, nunchakas, a staff, smoke bombs, throwing stars.. and all those other thingies that make life groovy HOWEVER, it’s a bit of a let down that the control system is so dire, meaning that actualy using your weapon is a lot harder than it has to be.
To be honest I remember the game being a lot more enjoyable on 8-bit systems (the C64 and ZX Spectrum).. maybe i’m just getting old Nevertheless, once you get used to the controls and the pixel-perfect precision that the game requires you may enjoy it.

Another great game from Opera Soft, the makers of Goody (that naughty little burglar dude). Opera Soft was a Spanish company and could be relied on to make great cute platform games. Ones that appealed to girls especially! Plus who couldn’t rely on a software company who had Berk on their team? I mean dang, Infocom eat your heart out

This game is also known as “Livingstone Supongo” (in Spanish I guess), but you might know it better as “Livingstone I presume” (English of course!).

In this game you are the journalist called Henry Morton Stanley. He is known as the guy who spent 8 months travelling around and through Africa to find Dr Livingstone. The doctor had been missing for over 3 years, but was found in great health in a small African village. He wasn’t lost at all but had been detained as he had gotten sick and was short of supplies. The famous “Dr Livingstone I presume?” phrase comes from when Stanley found the doctor and didn’t quite know what to say to him.

This game is a lot like the actual task was. You are to journey around in Africa and find Dr Livingstone. (Except I assume you are not an arrogant pompous git like that Stanley guy was Hehe). So you are in this side-scrolling action adventure. Who knows what could happen in the next screen? There are many jungle predators that want to eat you, and you must find the good doctor.

The graphics are great, and the sound is your typical PC speaker.

Overall its got great gameplay, and isn’t as predictable as you would want it to be.

The Opera Soft Team:

Wow, check it out! I never knew that Berk was a member of the Opera Soft team. Stay away from that trapdoor Guys!

Based on the William Gibson story of the same name, Neuromancer is set in a dark, dystopian future world where high technology is valued above human life. You play Case – a hacker* and mercenary who wants to do one last big job and get his life back on track, but why have so many of your fellow hackers been disapearing lately, and what’s going on in the “Matrix”.

If you’ve ever read the book then it WILL give you a head start in the game (if you havn’t then look at the links at the bottom of the screen.) Many characters and concepts are exactly the same, others have been left out completely. Plus the actual plot itself is more of an adaption of the book than a carbon copy, so there are still suprises in store for you.

*William Gibson was the first to coin the term, although in an earlier story.

This is no standard adventure game. Yes, the same elements are there: travel from location to location acquiring the various clues and information needed to progress further, but once you get into the various “hacking* elements then you will understand why this is such a classic. A good example re the various skills that you can acquire in the game. These come in the form of computer chips that are inserted into a port in your head (no, really) and boost your abilities. The Cryptology skill chip will allow you to decode encrypted data and passwords, while “coptalk” gives you the ability to talk like a policeman – which does come in handy at one point. Each skillchip comes in different versions, so a v3.0 skill chip will be more useful than a v2.0, but obviously more expensive.

Then there is cyberspace (or the “Matrix” as it is called in the game.) At various locations there are terminals that allow you to read bulletin boards, or contact your bank and download some much-needed funds. Each of these terminals only has a limited range in cyberspace though, and you need to get your hands on a “deck” before you do anything really fun – and most likely illegal. For instance if your funds are running short then you can just hack your way into a corporations system and add your name to the employee list. Now you get a weekly paycheck for 10000 credits. However, there are obstacles that must be overcome in cyberspace. Besides having to decrypt passwords to enter systems you may encounter “ICE”, which stands for Intruder Countermeasure Electronics, these are tailor made artificial intelligence’s which act as guard dogs in the matrix. You can buy ICE breaker programs and computer viruses from dealerships in the game, but you must make sure that you have the right tools for the job or you could end up brain dead.

The game does have one big failing – the sub standard parser that is used to interrogate characters in the game. Unless you ask EXACTLY the right question then it is possible to be thrown completely off track, abandoning a line of questioning which would have been successful if you had just phrased things differently. Apart from that small thing the game is excellent, thoroughly engrossing and very enjoyable (just make sure you have a notepad ready while playing – you’ll need it.)

Wow this was an original game. It really was, honest, but it was darn crap after a while. It’s been made on basically all the systems I can think of though, so it can’t be all that bad!

You’re the paperboy for that good ol’ newspaper The Daily Sun. It’s your job to make sure that all subscribers to the paper get their copy! Also you can go and abuse the people that don’t subscribe (an added bonus for those really dedicated workers!).

Playing this game gives a whole new angle to the role of the paperboy, although I’m not sure I’ve seen the lad that delivers our paper fall off his bike as often as I did . There are kerbs you hit, fences, dogs, people, and steps (oddly some of them are built across the footpath). There are even break-dancers!! Go figure o_O.

When I started out playing this I was awful, I gradually got better. I think that was the main thing that kept me playing it, not the actual game, but beating my own best. I know that doesn’t say much about the game play, but it does get repetitive. You either love this game, or you just play it because you are bored.

All in all though, it’s a great challenge. Beat your own best, or kick your friends arses Just get through it so you can say you did even! I admit I sometimes still give it a whirl.

You remember what it was like being a teenager right? hell I guess some of you ARE teenagers. Then you know what it feels like, your skin screws up, you get hair in really weird places, your voice wont make it’s mind up about what it wants to do and you just wish everyone would sod of and leave you alone or you just know you are gonna snap and do some SERIOUS damage to something.

Well anyway, when I was a teenager I had dreams, and my dreams were just like this game. I wanted to be 200ft tall and smash the hell out of everything, stamp on cars, pick up passers by and bite them in half…

Then this man came and gave me these pills and the bad thoughts went away, I only think about nice things like rainbows and fairies now.

Aaaaanyway, you’re here because you want to know about the game, not the dark thoughts that burrow into my mind like little worms screaming at me over and over and over again untill I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!

…

um.. yeah, Rampage.
In Rampage you take on the roles of one of three huge monsters – an ape, a lizardman and a wolfman. The object of the game is to knock down all of the buildings on each level, but theres a catch. Not only are the other 2 monsters competing with you but the military has also been called in. So you will have tanks shooting at you from below and helicopters buzzing around your head. Luckily if take too much damage you can just reach inside someone’s apartment window and um.. get yourself a snack

Lose too much energy and you will revert to human (nekkid) form and have to sidestep off screen, covering your shame (be careful though, because you just know one of those other big sods will just pick you up and pop you into their mouth.

Rampage is a fun and addictive game, maybe lacking in depth but with a lot of replayability.

Download it, it’s good

OK, back to my childhood for this one peeps. The first computer that I ever owned was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3…

Actualy scratch that, the Spectrum (or ‘Speccy’) was more akin to a shoebox than a computer. A shoebox that crassed repeatedly. A shoebox that crashed repeatedly and NOISELY! (WEEEEEEEOWWWW BWEEEEEEEEP!!! etc)

Right, back to my story. I got my lil speccy for Christmas all those years ago along with a boxed set of fighting games (yeah!). There was International Karate, Barbarian (both will be on this site soon) and Renegade among others. Many hours of my childhood were wasted kicking bikers in the head and throwing them off subway platforms into the darkness below.. so when I found out that there was PC version of this game I just had to have a copy.

And y’know what? It was better on the speccy.

Renegade is a fighting game in case you haven’t guessed, if you’ve ever played Double Dragon or Bad Dudes you’ll know what is involved. Fight an ever increasing number of baddies across several levels, getting ever closer to the BIG BOSS!

Yeah.. not much more to it than that, no one said a game had to be deep to be fun after all Graphics-wise the game is quite nice, if a little blocky and unclear and I cant really complain about the sound.. but the game just doesn’t feel as cohesive as it did on the speccy. It’s often hard to judge kicks and punches because the overly-colourful sprites mean that everything can be a jumble at times. The moves are also a bit limited.. you cant walk and punch at the same time for example.

On the PC this is an average game, on the speccy it kicked ass. I would suggest you download it and form your own opinion.

I guess before I get started I should say i’m prejudiced against Sierra adventures, in fact I have a natural dislike of any point and click adventure games in which it is possible to die (gimme Lucasarts all the way baybee!)

With that said, Space Quest 3 isn’t too bad at all.

The game carries on from SQ 2. Having escaped in a cryo pod from Vohaul’s asteroid he is picked up by an automatic garbage ship.. and so our next adventure begins.

SQ 3 was the first in the series to use Sierra’s AGI system, which among other things added mouse control to the game. It makes playing quite a bit easier now that you dont have to rely solely on cursor keys and the parser (which is still present BTW).

This is the first Space Quest game that I enjoyed playing, and although it retains many of the previous games flaws (such as an annoying habit of killing you with little or no warning) it improves on them in many areas.

The review seems to be missing… stay tuned…

Kurt Kalata’s excellent review puts it better than I ever could :

“It’s an arguable point that Double Dragon started the whole beat-em-up genre. You know, the type where you control some character who has to wander through a town and beat the crap out of every bad guy nearby. It’s even more startling when you learn that the game that started it all really isn’t all that impressive.
As the opening screen states, Marian is standing in the middle of the street when a big bad dude comes up, slugs her in the stomach, slings her over his shoulder and takes her off. This evil gang (supposedly being led by the hero’s brother Jimmy), for whatever reason, decided to capture her. Well, as Billy Lee, you’re off to rescue your girlfriend.

The game’s a simple walk forward and smash the crud out of any bad guys. However, this is Tradewest’s version of the arcade hit. The most glaring omission is the lack of a two player mode. Yep, this is a one player only affair, so don’t expect to plow through the bad guys with a friend. To compensate, a tournament mode is included that allows you to pick one of the game’s characters and pit them together in a small enclosed arena. These scenes can be played in two player, although the game simply ends once one persons dies…there’s no continuity in this mode, just quick bursts of fun. They also play a bit differently, with different sets of moves and the ability to run. It’s nice to play as the enemy characters, and everyone is drawn quite a bit bigger and better looking than in the actual game.

Another interesting twist is that Billy Lee gains more techniques as the game goes on. Each time you hit an enemy, you get some heart points. Once that number reaches 1000, you gain another technique. Although this is an interesting way to introduce new techniques, it’s kinda stupid to start the game without the ability to jump kick. Some of the moves are rather cool though, like punching enemies in the face when they’re lying on the ground. If that wasn’t enough, Tradewest added a couple areas in the game that weren’t in the arcade version (like the cave in level 3…” (Full Review at Classicgaming.com)

My personal opinion – it’s a fun game. I can remember playing it with a friend on the C64 a long time ago and having a ball. One thing that sticks out in my mmind is the fact that you could inflict damage on the person playing with you (indeed, at one point you have to fight them), not a big thing, but it’s oh so fun to stab someone in the back

It is a good game, not brilliant when compared to others beat-em-ups such as Final Fight or the console classic Streets of Rage, but fun nonetheless.

Zork Quest 1 and 2 were part if Infocom’s interactive comicbook range (Infocomics) and neither have much to do with the Zork universe as it is told in the original games.

Zork Quest 2 carries on from where the first game left off. The land of Quendor is at last at peace, but a sorceress has stolen a powerful spellbook with which she intends to wreak havoc on the land. It is upto you and your band of brave heroes to stop her.

Of the graphics and sounds it is hard to say anything positive If anything they detract from the story telling process, which is what makes Infocom adventures so good in the first place. The story itself is quite good (much more interesting and longer than Zork Quest 1), and it’s probably best if you see this as an Infocom adventure lite

Play this, then go and play some of the other Infocom games on the site, you’ll see what I mean.

The story
In a nutshell -

You play Bob Morlok, AKA Captain Blood, a games designer who after an encounter with Charles Darwin (Aren’t you supposed to be dead? Let’s just say i’m living incognito at the moment!) Is transported into one of his own creations. Unfortunately in the process of this his was also cloned several times, and this triggered “gradual cellular degeneration”. Fortunately this can be slowed by turning over many of Bloods bodily functions to the Ark (your ship in the game). But to stop the process totally you must find each of the clones, or “numbers” as they are called in the game, and drain them of the fluids you need to survive. This task isn’t helped by the fact that each Number is hiding on a different planet somewhere in the galaxy, and you have no idea where to look.

—

If ever a game was to be described as “unique” then surely this is it. Captain Blood is a non-linear game that combines adventure, strategy and action elements with an interesting storyline.

As I said in the section above, your task in the game is to find 5 clones of yourself, unfortunately this is no easy task, considering how big the universe is that the game is set in. To get anywhere in the game you have to work out how to deal with the varied and interesting characters in the game – and this is where the game really shines.

Here’s a little guide to your first alien encounter in the game -

When you start you will be presented with an orbital view of a planet (the Blood universe is randomly generated so it’s impossible to tell you exactly which planet you will start at.) A quick press of the icon takes you to a view of the planet surface. Follow the on screen indicator to find a canyon somewhere on the planet – for some reason the aliens in the game all live at the end of canyons?

When you finally reach your destination the screen will pause and which ever alien inhabits that planet will appear, as will the UPCOM interface. This is a panel of icons which is used for communication in the game, each icon represents a word or concept, so for example if you were to press these icons – you would have just threatened to kill whoever you are speaking to. The UPCOM does take quite a while to get used to, with many long pauses in conversations as you try to find a certain word, but many of the icons are quite descriptive so with a little practice you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Some of these encounters can have very interesting, and amusing results. For instance if a certain character isn’t being very helpfull then you can trick him into allowing you to teleport him abord your ship, and then strand him on some remote planet, its amazing how fast he’ll open up to you =)

Now I should really mention the games bad points – i.e. the graphics and sound. If you have no intention of playing the game on other formats then you wont mind this so much, but I have tried three other versions of the game and the PC version is by far the worst – even the ZX spectrum version is superior. The game is missing many of the best features from other versions, such as the 2001-esque hyperdrive sequence and the spoken bluddian language (although to be fair this was only included in the original Atari ST version.)

Like I said if you are only playing the PC version then your not gonna miss anything, but it’s hard for me to recommend it after playing the others.

Anyway, the PC version is less than a megabyte to download so give it a try; maybe you’ll think more of it than I do.

Hehe, this game is so much fun! My BMX buddies used to always come around and play the BMX one when it was too rainy for us to go out We got really really good at it, and also at the hacky (footbag) game as well.

California games can be compared to the Olympics, a collection of events you compete in (on a not so grand scale of course!). You can compete in sports events such as skateboarding, footbag (hacky), surfing, roller-skating, frisbee and BMX.

I have to say that my favorite event of the game was BMX. But I think you already knew that. I could do forward and back flips, plus all kinds of neat tricks, and actually make it to the end of the track. It was so much fun, dodging logs and rocks and things that looked like dead people but probably weren’t. Second was the surfing, now that was fun, I was getting pretty good at that too, the panel of judges giving me great scores! Footbag was another one that was great! I liked trying to hit the seagull that was flying around above me with the footbag Roller-skating was fun, the guys whistling at you as you skated past, and then you fall on your ass because you keep tripping over stuff. It was a great game! Wow, I see that I only like things I’m good at well don’t try telling me that you are any different.

The things I was bad at, or didn’t like were the skateboarding and frisbee. I was completely lame at both. In the skateboarding, I always ended up going up one side, then up the other then not as far up the first, even lower on the next side, slowly ebbing down into a standstill, then falling on my arse. You get the idea I just couldn’t make that damn thing move! The frisbee, well I always jumped in the opposite direction and all through my years of playing this game, I only caught the damn frisbee once!

The sound and graphics were great, especially for a 1988 game. Just your average PC speaker sounds, but when you hit the seagull * giggle *. The game was great to look at, you weren’t hindered in your events by crappy graphics, like some games have.

I thoroughly recommend this game! Hours and hours of fun are in store for you if you give it a shot, its so much fun!

I remember this gaem on the ZX Spectrum and my god it’s fun

I don’t know for sure if it’s based on the Arnie Film of the same name (in Europe the game was released as Barbarian while everywhere else it was Death Sword). The game consists of a series of one on one sword fighting bouts against ever more difficult opponents. Use a range of moves (blocks, thrusts and the ever cool overhead chop) to defeat your opponent and and win the game. Not a whole lot more to it than that.

However, what is really great about this game is the two player option where you and a friend compete to against eachother. Some of my fondest memories involve decapitating the kid who lived down the street.. (you know how the rest of this joke goes, so I wont bother).

Great fun.

Bats and balls.. bats and balls… bats and balls…*shiver*….

*ahem*

OK… hands up all those who are old enough to Breakout!

For all you young’uns, Breakout involved trying to deflect a bouncing ball with a padel (while keeping it in play) so that it smashed into a wall of coloured bricks. Not only was it simplicity itself, it was also more addictive then covering yourself in peanut butter and thinking about nuns… yeah!

So anyway, Arkanoid is a demon hell-spawned clone of Breakout; a silly, silly plot (something about spaceships and “space walls”), more features, better graphics, about a quadrillion (it’s a word!) times more addictive than the original! The biggest improvement is the addition of powerups that fall down the screen when you hit certain bricks. The *S* power up slows down the speed of the ball (sorry, energy bolt =P) so that you can take things a little easier, while the *L* powerup gives you a laser gun (COOL!).

So yeah, not a lot of depth to the game, but still more fun than a weasel in a crossbow.