A great smash hit and one of the most popular arcades ever released, Arkanoid promises plenty of fun even today! The game was converted to almost all 8/16bit home computers and consoles back in 1986!
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY In Arkanoid, your planet is invaded by an alien species and you control "Vaus". Vaus is a kind of an oddly designed spacecraft that you use as paddle that prevents any alien ball from falling out of the playing field. The Vaus re-bounces any ball towards a number of colored bricks. When a ball strikes a brick it causes it to break and when all bricks are cleared from the screen, you advance to the next level where another pattern of bricks appears. There is a number of more solid bricks that must be hit multiple times to break (like the metal ones) while there are also unbreakable bricks that can change the ball's direction. In more advanced levels, you will encounter some flying enemy ships and other creatures that can bounce back the ball when hit. You can collect power up capsules to enhance the Vaus in various ways: you can expand its length to cover more space, multiply the number of balls you strike, equip a laser cannon to shoot bricks and enemies, open a direct "portal" to the next level, make a ball to stick on your paddle and more (even make the paddle's length smaller -which is bad). Still the gameplay remains the same. Arkanoid is among the greatest video games in history and so highly accepted that it was released in almost every 8bit/16bit home computer and video game console; it is a really addictive -yet tricky game- that needs some skills to master but it never gets frustrating.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The Speccy conversion is quite good in terms of sound and visuals. It has bright colors on the bricks and the background though most of the original detail is missing. But again, we were very pleased with the colors considering the limited ZX palette! The sprites (and the paddle) move relatively fast having only a few frame-rate drops when too many sprites appear on screen (same as in all 8bit home computer ports, except of the C64). The sound is equally pleasant, featuring memorable short tunes and sound effects. Overall, Arkanoid is among the best coin-ops conversions for the Speccy!
CPU: Z80 @ 3.5 MHz MEMORY: 16 KB / 48 KB / 128 KB GRAPHICS: Video output is through an RF modulator and was designed for use with contemporary portable television sets, for a simple colour graphic display. Features a palette of 15 shades: seven colours at two levels of brightness each, plus black. The image resolution is 256x192 with the same colour limitations. SOUND: Early models (48k) had sound output through a beeper on the machine itself. This is capable of producing one channel with 10 octaves. Late models (128k) fetured a three-channel audio via the AY-3-8912 chip, MIDI compatibility