taito’s 1986 arkanoid updated the formula of atari’s breakout with power-ups and meaningful level design; since then it’s been among the most widely-imitated games. so many “ball & paddle” games have seen release that it’s easy to believe that the problems of many of them are endemic to the formula itself: since the player has only periodic control of the ball she must use to clear the screen of block targets, tedium frequently sets in as the player struggles to eliminate the last straggling hard-to-reach blocks on the screen.
nurium’s 2005 title breakquest tries to solve the problem by giving the player a small amount of direct control over the ball in the form of a gravity beam. arkedo’s ds effort nervous brickdown tries to evade tedium by presenting a variety of gameplay ideas, but the game is so badly organized that each, in isolation, quickly becomes tedious.
taito’s own arkanoid ds contains no more items or abilities than the original arkanoid; its stages are built of what are essentially three types of block. yet the game remains compelling and exhilerating, standing out in even as oversaturated a “genre” as the one it built.
the ways in which it manages this are subtle. the most obvious difference from the original is the screen size: arkanoid ds takes full advantage of the dual screens’ vertical space, placing the blocks on the top screen and the player’s paddle (the vaus) on the bottom. the ample space between blocks and paddle mean that when the game gets fast - and it does, quickly - the player has plenty of uncluttered space in which to track and return the ball. at high speed, the game becomes a kind of tennis match, serve and return.
less obvious is that the playspace isn’t just taller: it’s also more narrow. this means that the ball bounces more, covering a wider area, and also that there’s less area to cover. combined with the fast speed the dual screens allow, that means stages tend to go quickly. simple in design - and true to the game it emulates - arkanoid ds manages to retain the arcade pace that its series’s imitators, overcomplicated and slow, often lack.
in a further nod to its arcade legacy, arkanoid ds ships with (or without*) a paddle - a rotary dial - controller that plugs into the gameboy slot of the ds. though the weight the controller adds to a ds lite takes a little getting used to, the paddle feels great, and the dial spins with just the right amount of resistance and the cool rolling click of hidden ball bearings. i played through most of the game with the stylus prior to getting my hands on a paddle, and that worked just as well.
arkanoid ds, maybe more than anything, reminds me of pac-man: championship edition. while so many of the games that trail between these revisions and their progenitors add only more clutter, these sequels edit the original formula to be leaner, faster, more considered and compelling: a real update, not just new content.
* both arkanoid ds and the paddle controller are available seperately of one another.