Arkanoid

[scooby1970]

Released by Imagine in 1987, this game was always one of my favourite versions of Breakout... Actually, my favourite version of the classic ball bouncing, break breaking game. With great graphics, great use of overscan, and some arcade quality sound effects, Arkanoid really was something special.

I've played through the game quite a few times, and it never ages. It's simple one-more-go mechanics just got me addicted back in the 80's, and it's still fun to play these days.

Once again I think the Amstrad version was the best of the three main 8-bit computers. It's just something about those colourful graphics and smooth animation that makes it that bit special.

Your thoughts?

Mark

[EgoTrip]

I'm not a massive fan of breakout. Arkanoid was the best implementation of it I have played, but the gameplay is too linear and it just gets too repetitive too quickly.

[MacDeath]

Loved both Arkanoids on CPC...
Played them a lot too.

The 2nd opus was by far better (smoother) but I preferred the 1st's sounds... and the starfield effect was simply amazing to me... WTF ? a real full screen madness ?

[TFM]

Released by Imagine in 1987, this game was always one of my favourite versions of Breakout... Actually, my favourite version of the classic ball bouncing, break breaking game. With great graphics, great use of overscan.... snip

Well, sorry. That's not overscan. They just changed the screen format, but it's still 16 KB V-RAM. Overscan would use more than 16 KB. However, Arkanoid it still one of my Breakout favorites too, but together with Ballbreaker (which looks so wonderful in Mode 0. They did know how to use Mode 0!).

[milamber]

Loved both Arkanoids on CPC...
Played them a lot too.

The 2nd opus was by far better (smoother) but I preferred the 1st's sounds... and the starfield effect was simply amazing to me... WTF ? a real full screen madness ?

I agree with you on the starfield effect - dont think I`d ever seen that before on the CPC.

Both games looked wonderful and where far more appealing than the speccy & drab looking C64 version.

[AMSDOS]

I've only played the PD game Breakdown, though I was so impressed with it I stuck with it ever since cause it's one of those games where you can design your own Levels, so I'm unsure if it's as complete as Arkanoid is, though it's fun to play and you can play around with it yourself! 

[mahlemiut]

Personally, I'd say Arkanoid is probably the most accurate arcade port on the CPC.  That being said, I didn't like it all that much, much too frustrating (especially round 3).

I preferred Krakout a lot more, especially that enemy that chews up your ball and spits out the remains.

[MacDeath]

 

I agree with you on the starfield effect - dont think I`d ever seen that before on the CPC.

Arkanoid was perhaps the game that shown that CPC could into overscan...

ok the playpart is simply redimension (like 256x256... sort of : mode0 = 128x256...), yet the starfield is fully overscanned fullfullscreen...


Many old  Arcade machines had sort of 256x256 display.

Wikipedia :

Cabinet : Upright

Display : Vertical, Raster, standard resolution (Used: 224 x 256)

The vertical "upright" cabinets were more than often with these resolution...

And CPC can quite well emulate this display in redimensioned "256x256"...

Halas we got the lame speccy 256x192 instead... more than often... with extra large HUD...(often 1/3 of the screen...far too many examples...)


Black Tiger : Arcade  ? 256×224
Pacmania : Namco System 1: 224×288 (vertical)

All of those could be well implemented on CPC in a 256x256 resolution (even less...) which is even lighter than the "normal 320x200"...
But hey, then you could not get this from a speccy code...



The same as Arkanoids goes with Donkey Kong : "arcade perfect" thx to such "Amstrad vertical display..." (and no scrollings needed...)


Even a vertical game like toobin' could have been done with quite the exact proportions on CPC.

getting from a 384 x 512 pixels vertical display to a 192x256 mode1 (96x256 mode 0 ) perhaps... well perhaps not (wrong calculus...)
Oh yeah, just add some big HUD then...

See pic related... turned into mode0 resolution... sort of.

So Yeah Arkanoid was great in that it was based on the actual arcade (256 pixels vertical display) and not Speccy (192 pixels vertical limitation)...

Which was sure a rare occurence... (see the Speccy port page and arcade port page...)