It's worth pointing out that none of these abilities are unique to Arkanoid DS. Present are: barrier (adds another layer to your shields), catch (makes the vaus "sticky," allowing you to aim each shot), disruption (splits the ball into three), extend (makes your paddle longer), laser (gives you the ability to shoot straight up from the vaus), megaball (makes it so that all normal bricks in the path of the ball are destroyed with no resistance to the ball itself), reduction (shrinks your vaus), slow (reduces speed), vanish (when you get this, the next color of brick you strike will all vanish) and warp (finishes the level automatically). There are more power-ups in this version than the original, but nowhere near as many as are required to bring this title to contemporary standards. The original Arkanoid had little enemy crafts that would come down from the top of the screen, and you had to strike them with the ball to destroy them. Hmm, perhaps I have more to work with in this critique than I thought. Each level is a thin strip of play area with empty columns of unused screen real estate on either side. What is odd however is that, while both screens are being used, neither one is being used to its fullest extent. This works fairly swell, even with a half-inch black strip bisecting the view. The touch-sensitive pad is the control input for the vaus (although you can use the d-pad as well if you wish), and both screens are utilized, with bricks at the top and vaus at the bottom.
The differences we have to work with here lie in the Nintendo DS itself. Instead of losing a life every time you miss a ball, your sphere will bounce off of one of these shields. Unlike the original, you are given between three and five barriers underneath your vaus. Some drop power-ups that assist or detract from your ability to deflect said ball back upward. Each block struck by the ball disappears.
Arkanoid ds reviews series#
Like all prior versions in this franchise, you have a little barrier at the bottom of the screen, and you move it back and forth to deflect a ball upward toward a series of multi-colored blocks. It seems to me that there isn't much in the way of subject matter to comment on. You must understand my predicament in taking on this review: This is single-player Pong. This is the story, such as it is, that explains why you're bouncing balls at bricks. Seven of these satellites get randomly sucked into an intra-dimensional vortex, leaving one Ananke to pursue the others in vaus.
This time around, "Arkanoid" is a planet (instead of an exploding spaceship) surrounded by eight satellites, each of these piloted by a little alien being called an Ananke. I realize it's a fun word to say, but can't we at least once include it in a game named after it? Now, in Arkanoid DS, we are once again presented with a story that has absolutely nothing to do with the Arkanoid itself. In a classic example of "out of the frying pan and into the fire," this plucky little pod avoided the destruction of the Arkanoid mother ship only to be warped straight into an alternate dimension of bouncing balls and bricks. The original Arkanoid was essentially the story of an escape pod called a "vaus" escaping from a mother ship that was in the midst of imploding. Could anyone in 1972 have ever guessed that in 2008, we would be playing the same game on a handheld device? Probably not, if only because we were too busy envisioning a future filled with flying cars and spandex unitards. Here we are, 22 years later, reviewing the fourth expansion to the clone of a clone.
Who knew digital ping-pong could coast so far on novelty alone? After that, it was the single-player version known as Breakout in 1976, and then the most-known and successful clone, Arkanoid in 1986.
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