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Arkanoid is a 1986 block breaker arcade game developed and published by Taito. In North America, it was published by Romstar. Controlling a paddle-like craft known as the Vaus, the player is tasked with clearing a formation of colorful blocks by deflecting a ball towards it without letting the ball leave the bottom edge of the playfield. Some blocks contain power-ups that have various effects, such as increasing the length of the Vaus, creating several additional balls, or equipping the Vaus with cannons. Other blocks may be indestructible or require multiple hits to break.
Created by Taito designers Akira Fujita and Hiroshi Tsujino, Arkanoid expanded on the concept established in Atari's Breakout, a successful game in its own right that was met with a large wave of similar clone games from other manufacturers.
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Arkanoid (DOS version) |
It was part of a contest within Taito, where two teams of designers had to complete a block breaker game and determine which one was superior to the other. The film Tron served as inspiration for the game's futuristic, neon aesthetic. Level designs were sketched on paper before being programmed and tested to make sure they were fun to play. The enemy and power-up designs were 3D models converted into sprite art.
Early location tests for Arkanoid surpassed Taito's initial expectations. It became a major commercial success in arcades, becoming the highest-grossing table arcade cabinet of 1987 in Japan and the year's highest-grossing conversion kit in the United States. The game was commended by critics for its gameplay, simplicity, addictive nature, and improvements over the original Breakout concept. The game revitalized the genre and set the groundwork for many games to follow. Arkanoid was ported to many home video game platforms, including the Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, ZX Spectrum, and (years later) mobile phones, and it spawned a long series of sequels and updates over the course of two decades.
Arkanoid is a block breaker video game. Its plot involves the starship Arkanoid being attacked by a mysterious entity from space named DOH. A small paddle-shaped craft, the Vaus, is ejected from the Arkanoid.
The player controls the 'Vaus', a space vessel that acts as the game's 'paddle' which prevents a ball from falling from the playing field, and attempts to bounce the ball against a number of bricks. The ball striking a brick causes the brick to disappear. When all the bricks are gone, the player advances to the next level, where another pattern of bricks appears. There are game variations (bricks that have to be hit multiple times, flying enemy ships, etc.) and power-up capsules to assist the player (expand the Vaus, multiply the number of balls, equip a laser cannon, break directly to the next level, extra Vaus, etc.), but the gameplay remains the same.
On the final stage (33 on most versions, but 36 on the NES), the player takes on the game's boss, 'DOH'. Once this point is reached, the player no longer has the option to continue after running out of lives, making this segment more difficult. The game is over regardless of the outcome.
If the player succeeds in defeating 'DOH', the game rewards them by showing the ending, in which time starts to flow backwards, and Vaus escapes the distorted space just in time to return to the Arkanoid, which has also reversed back to perfect condition. The game's text warns, however, that the journey has only started, and that the player hasn't seen the last of 'DOH'.
More details about this game can be found on
Wikipedia.org.
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5 different online emulators are available for Arkanoid. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For
maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic
features of each emulator available for this game Arkanoid are summarized in the following table:
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This version of Arkanoid was designed for personal computers with operating system MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System),
which was operating system developed by Microsoft in 1981. It was the most widely-used operating system in the first half of the 1990s. MS-DOS was supplied
with most of the IBM computers that purchased a license from Microsoft. After 1995, it was pushed out by a graphically more advanced system - Windows and
its development was ceased in 2000. At the
time of its greatest fame, several thousand games designed specifically for computers with this system were created. Today, its development is no longer continue
and for emulation the free DOSBox emulator is most often used. More information about MS-DOS operating system can be found
