Developers description of the game.
Arkanoid: Space Ball will be a surprise for the amateurs of unusual and picturesque games as Arkanoid and space games. Everybody who wishes to spend time perfectly will take a pleasure in "Arkanoid: Space Ball" too. A futuristic atmosphere, modern techno-style graphics, a dynamical game play and an excellent soundtrack give this game as a present for all Arkanoid’s admirers.
You have to clear a lot of platforms-levels soaring in space, and meteorites, spacecrafts and guns of enemies constantly will be threatened your life. Numerous bonuses dropped out from the broken blocks will help you to pass all obstacles: the laser, the rocket launcher, force fields and many other things. Game is distinguished by the features interesting and unusual for classical Arkanoid: horizontally oriented break block formation, moving and shooting bricks, Gravitational anomalies effects to flights of the balls and missiles, etc.
Reference: http://www.wegroup.org/games/arkanoid-games/arkanoid-space-ball.html accessed 24th April 09
The Game:
When you first open up the game you’ll see a constant stream of tips scrolling along the bottom of the main menu. For those not used to or familiar with arkanoids; (yes there will still be some who aren’t), it may be useful if you read some of the tips that are given before starting the game proper.
The help section tells you about the game and how to play it, then lists all the different bricks and what they do, then gives you a list of all the bonuses available, which include the usual power ups such as shrink and expand balls, shrink and expand bat etc etc, plus some less common such as the ghost ball, and brick weakener. There’s a toggle in options to turn off the auto bonus. What this means is that if you turn the auto bonus off you can stack up all your bonuses and use them when you want to. They also pass onto the next level, whereas if you toggle this switch on the bonuses are spent as you collect them. If you want to play the game at it’s hardest make sure it’s toggled on. I found toggling it off more fun because I could set up certain bonuses, for example, if you’re starting with a new ball, before you release it, select the bonus you want to use from those you’ve accumulated, by right clicking the mouse. To scroll through the accumulated bonuses use the mouse wheel. Only a couple of these are visible to the bottom right of the playing arena. Select ghost ball and wait until the timer which tells you how long the power up will last is at around 3 seconds. Release the ball and it will pass through all the bricks at the front and then become solid again; and trapped within the bricks. This enables you to collect more bonuses with relative safety and also destroys lots of bricks before finally breaking through to the bat side of the bricks. Besides the bonuses there are special bricks such as moving bricks and bricks that explode and destroy surrounding bricks. The game also includes several Objects that appear in the playing field; some times more than one. These include the Kamikase, which will blow up the paddle if it hits it, the robotic eye follows the bat ad can cause the ball to ricochet , the robotic hand grabs the ball and releases it as speed near the bat. I lost several balls because of this object. You’ll also find ice meteorites which freeze your bat for three seconds plus the fiery meteorite that blows up the paddle. There are several more that you can discover for yourself.
What actually makes this particular arkanoid/breakout game worth having apart from the retro feel, is the addition of a level editor and level generator. The level editor is actually really easy to use compared to some level editors I’ve tried to use, (e.g. reflectives ricochet editor and hyperballoid 2’s editor). This one only has a few commands and to start creating a level all you need to do is click on the tab key which opens up the brick selection panel. Select and click on the brick you want to use then press tab again. You can now place the brick you chose anywhere on the game arena by left clicking the mouse and removing wrongly placed bricks by right clicking, and continue to do so until you want to change the style of brick. To access levels you’ve created just select custom levels, or alternatively just press the level generator button to creat randomly geerated levels.
From the options menu you can also toggle on or off the in game tutorial. If you select the tutorial, a small window with a brief description of the brick type, bonus or object pops up.
Features:
• Level generator
• Level editor
• 2 modes to play
• Original bonuses and power-ups
• Unusual 'space' objects
• Joystick and GamePad support
Specifications:
• CPU: 500 MHz
• RAM: 128 Mb
• Video: 16Mb Video Card (OpenGL video card recommended)
• Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP
• Mac OS X: 10.3.9 or above, Intel and PowerPC
• Linux: SDL 1.2.5, SDL-Image 1.2.5, SDL-Mixer 1.2.7
Video:
Watch video of Space Ball game pay HERE
Images
See all images of Space Ball on one page HERE
Watch slideshow of Space Ball images
Conclusion
I’m a little biased when it comes to arkanoid games because I’ve always loved them since the very first breakout by Taito which was made in the 1970’s. You can download the original plus many more for free so long as you remember the name of the game. For example Arkanoid Doh it Again or The Revenge of Doh. I spent a lot of money playing the original in the mess when I was in the army. Today’s isn’t as graphically pleasing when comparing it to the likes of Ball 7 the last arkanoid be given away or Reflexives Ricochet series, nevertheless it delivers in the game play stakes.
The game is ideal for the beginner because the pace of the game is relatively slow, but at the same tie there seems to be a lot going on. Loads of bonuses and objects floating around, cumulative bonuses, so for example using three or four ball size increasers makes the ball super large. I usually like a challenge with my arkanoid so thought this would be a little tame, but, with the addition of the various objects such as the claw, the game became quite challenging at times, but still retained it’s sedate feel. I’m certainly happy with it. There is the added bonus of an easy to use levels editor, which really is so easy to use, you can throw together as many levels as you care to make. I was running the demo and when I had only 10 minutes left of the demo I created 3 levels and played all three through. That’s how easy it is. It reminds me a lot of some of the earlier arkanoid’s; there’s a retro feel about it, yet it was only made a few years ago. I’d give it a 7 out of 10 for all round playability.
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Further information.
Free Arkanoids and Breakouts:
There has been loads of free arkanoids posted in a dedicated thread in the games discussion thread and you’ll also find some in the games for the weekdays thread. I recommend Hoowaball, Chak's Temple, DXBall and DXBall 2, Beatball, Poing, Arcamania 2 Retro, as well as a few others; plus over 10 commercial quality arkanoids from Gametop that include A Ball, which is actually Nuclear Ball and Geometry Ball which is Elefuns Twinzoid. You'll find links to mst of the Gametop games in the arkanoids thread in the forums.
Go to Gametop for free commercial quality Arkanoids
