By 1986 Breakout was ten years old, and every new Spectrum came with a version of it, Thru the Wall, on its introductory tape. Then Taito put the old bat-and-ball game into a new arcade cabinet. The bat became a spacecraft, the Vaus, steered with a knob that turned freely in both directions. Some bricks now took several hits and some could not be broken at all. Others dropped spinning capsules that widened the bat, fitted it with lasers or split the ball into three, while small aliens drifted down and knocked the ball off course. After 32 walls of bricks, the player met the thing that had trapped the Vaus. Your Sinclair put it in 1987: “It’s the hottest arcade game of the moment, yet its basic idea’s as old as Max Bygraves.”
Retro Gamer later argued that the game took over its parent’s name: whenever someone makes a Breakout-type game now, “it will inevitably be dubbed an ‘Arkanoid clone’”.
Fast facts
- Developer: Taito; arcade release in 1986, and in London arcades by September that year.
- Controls: a free-turning knob, a spinner.
- Rounds: 32 walls of bricks, then a 33rd with the boss, Doh.
- Capsules: seven kinds, for a slower ball, a longer bat, catching the ball, three balls, lasers, an extra life and an exit to the next round.
- British home versions: published in 1987 by Ocean under its Imagine label, from £7.95 on the Spectrum; the Commodore 64 music was by Martin Galway.
- NES version: sold with a knob controller of its own; not released in Europe.
- Sequel: Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh (arcade 1987; Imagine’s home versions 1988).
Bricks, capsules and aliens
The game opened with its story. The mothership Arkanoid had been destroyed, and its surviving shuttle, the Vaus, had been pulled into a void by “the Dimension Changer”, as the British reviewers of 1987 called it, which held it inside 32 screens of bricks.
The bricks came in eight colours, which scored differently, and two special kinds. Silver bricks, Amazing Computing explained in 1988, needed “up to five hits” depending on the round; gold ones were indestructible. The capsules were the heart of the game. The same magazine listed all seven:
- Slow slowed the ball down, though never below a minimum speed.
- Expand doubled the length of the Vaus.
- Catch held the ball on the bat, so the player could move and aim before releasing it.
- Disruption split the ball into three.
- Laser gave the Vaus twin guns that could shoot bricks and aliens.
- Player, marked P, gave an extra Vaus.
- Break opened a door at the side of the playfield that led straight to the next round.
The capsules forced choices. A new one cancelled the old: catching a Catch capsule while armed with lasers took the lasers away. And while two of the three balls from a Disruption were still in play, no more capsules fell, which, Amazing Computing noted, “will make many people think twice” about catching one.
The aliens were a nuisance more than a threat. Touching the Vaus or the ball destroyed them, but as ZZAP!64 put it, “when the ball hits an alien, it explodes and sends the ball flying off in the opposite direction”.
Doh
The 33rd round had no bricks. In its place was the boss, a giant face that Retro Gamer likened to “an evil piece of Easter Island masonry”. Your Sinclair’s tips page in 1987 described a reader from the Netherlands who had reached it on the Spectrum: after 32 levels he found “the final level containing a ghastly face, which spat aliens at him”, and when he beat it the game told him that “the dimension controlling Fort Doh has now been destroyed”. An American reviewer of the Amiga version found it the only round from which the game would not let him continue after losing his last life: “a vicious level in which you are under attack”.
Doh stayed with the series. The sequel was named after it, and the 1987 Rainbow Islands, another Taito game, gave one of its seven islands an Arkanoid theme.
A reported hit
How big a hit Arkanoid was depends on who is counting. A chart that Sinclair User printed in September 1986, compiled from the takings of one arcade in London’s West End, had it at number 15. Six months later Your Sinclair called it “the hottest arcade game of the moment” and gave away a working Arkanoid arcade board fitted into a photographer’s metal suitcase, with a monitor, as the first prize in a competition run with Ocean. Looking back on Taito’s history, though, Retro Gamer counted it among the company’s minor hits of the mid-1980s, alongside Elevator Action.
The British home versions
Ocean bought the home rights and released the conversions in 1987 under the Imagine name, which it had bought from the liquidators of the original Imagine. Computer Gamer called it “the officially licensed coin-op conversion”, arriving a month after Gremlin Graphics’ Krakout, a sideways Breakout game, and magazines compared the two.
The Spectrum version, £7.95, was programmed by Mike Lamb. CRASH gave it 59% in April 1987. Its reviewers found it “surprisingly addictive”, but complained that the collision detection was poor and that “the program changes speed at the most illogical moments”. One of them had a more basic objection: this was a version of “the game that was given away with the very first machine”. Lamb, looking back decades later, thought he knew why reviewers had been unkind. The Spectrum had no knob, so he made the bat accelerate towards the ball “to compensate for not having analogue control. But I think if you played the game a while it was better my way.”
Sinclair User was far happier, calling the game “completely wonderful” and arguing that it had so many “little twiddles and added bits” that charges of unoriginality were pointless.
The Commodore 64 version, £8.95, did best. ZZAP!64 gave it 80% in April 1987, with 96% for sound. It worked with joystick, keys, paddles or a mouse, and one reviewer recommended it above all with the mouse: “it’s simply gorgeous playing with it”. David Collier programmed it, according to his Ocean colleague Paul Owens, and Mark Jones, one of Ocean’s artists, drew the graphics after spending hours in the company’s basement arcade room: “I actually got very good at Arkanoid and videotaped it for reference.”
Martin Galway’s music
The Commodore 64 music was Martin Galway’s, and it was the part people remembered. Its drums were played through the SID chip’s volume register, a crude way of making sampled sound that Galway had worked out from someone else’s code, and that few commercial Commodore 64 games had used before (the Martin Galway entry explains how it works). The tune had a life beyond the game: ZZAP!64‘s readers’ chart of favourite music in November 1987 included Galway’s Arkanoid title tune, and The One noted in 1990 that the tune had first been heard in the Spectrum version of Ocean’s Cobra.
Other machines
Imagine’s versions also covered the Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit computers, Atari ST, MSX and IBM PC; ACE’s buyer’s guide of January 1988 listed them at prices from £7.95 on cassette to £19.95 for the PC disk. In a round-up of Breakout games in December 1987, The Games Machine thought the ST version the best of Imagine’s conversions, “retaining all of the arcade’s original features”. Peter Johnson converted it to the BBC Micro, working, as he did for several of Ocean’s arcade conversions, from the original arcade board, which Ocean sent him in a suitcase with a power supply and a JAMMA interface.
In America the Amiga version came from Discovery Software, under licence from Taito America. Amazing Computing thought it “convincing”. Computer Gaming World’s reviewer played for three hours straight after first loading it, and liked that a game over let him carry on from the round where he had stopped. The Amiga version, steered with the mouse, was one of the best-received, Retro Gamer said later.
The NES version
The NES version was listed for August 1987 in Nintendo’s Japanese and American release schedule. It came packed with its own controller, “a smaller version of the ‘spinner’ on the arcade cab”, as Retro Gamer described it, and added three extra rounds at the end. Retro Gamer thought it probably the best version of all, but noted that it was never released in Europe. The first issue of Nintendo Power, in July 1988, carried tips for it.
Revenge of Doh and later games
Taito followed the game with Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh. In ZZAP!64’s telling of the story, Doh had returned 4,000 years later, hiding in a huge alien vessel, the Zarg. The sequel had twice as many kinds of capsule, bricks that moved or regenerated, and a structure of two paths through its rounds. Imagine published the home versions in spring 1988. ZZAP!64 gave the Commodore 64 version 89% in May 1988 and called it “the most accomplished and playable Breakout variant so far”. The Spectrum version was again by Mike Lamb, with graphics by Ron Fowles, and Retro Gamer found that it replaced two of the arcade rounds with stages spelling out their initials.
Later games moved further from the original. Arkanoid: Doh It Again for the Super NES gave Doh a torso and arms, and the arcade Arkanoid Returns of 1997 dropped the look of the earlier games. Arkanoid DS (2007) came with a paddle attachment for the Nintendo DS in Japan. Taito’s mobile Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders (2017) set the Vaus against the invaders, and Microids’ Arkanoid – Eternal Battle (2022) added a battle-royale mode for 25 players.
Sources
- Retro Gamer issue 43, 2007, p. 67: Doh as “an evil piece of Easter Island masonry”; the NES version’s controller.
- “The Definitive: Arkanoid”, Retro Gamer, reprinted in Retro Gamer Collection volume 4 (2010), pp. 193–198: Taito’s 1986 release; “Arkanoid clone”; the home versions (the Amiga’s reception; the NES version’s extra rounds and controller, not released in Europe); Revenge of Doh and the Spectrum version’s initials; Doh It Again, Arkanoid Returns and Arkanoid DS.
- Retro Gamer issue 117, 2013, pp. 34–41, “The Story of Breakout”: Breakout’s release in 1976.
- Retro Gamer issue 45, 2007, Mike Bevan’s feature on Taito’s F series hardware: Arkanoid and Elevator Action as minor hits, as cited in the Taito entry.
- Sinclair User issue 54, September 1986, p. 52: coin-op chart compiled by Coin Slot. Issue 61, April 1987, p. 46: Spectrum review.
- Computer and Video Games issue 62, December 1986, p. 142: arcade review (the knob that steers the Vaus). Issue 66, April 1987, p. 97: Imagine advertisement (Spectrum £7.95).
- Your Sinclair issue 15, March 1987, pp. 52–53: the Ocean competition and its arcade machine in a suitcase. Issue 20, August 1987, p. 43: tips (the final level and the closing message).
- CRASH issue 39, April 1987, p. 22: Spectrum review (Imagine, £7.95, author Mike Lamb, 59%; Thru the Wall “comes free with a Spectrum”).
- ZZAP!64 issue 24, April 1987, p. 39: Commodore 64 review (Imagine, £8.95; sound 96%, overall 80%). Issue 37, May 1988, p. 20: The Revenge of Doh (89%).
- Computer Gamer issue 26, May 1987, p. 17: review of the Commodore 64 and Spectrum versions.
- ACE issue 4, January 1988, p. 137: buyer’s guide listing Imagine’s versions and prices.
- The Games Machine issue 2, December 1987, p. 30: round-up of Breakout games.
- Computer Gaming World issue 44, February 1988, p. 31: Amiga review. Commodore Magazine, May 1988, p. 36: Amiga review. Amazing Computing volume 3 number 8, August 1988, p. 29: Amiga review (Discovery Software; licensed from Taito America; the capsules and bricks).
- Computer and Video Games issue 73, November 1987, p. 132: Nintendo’s Japanese and American release schedule. Nintendo Power issue 1, July 1988, p. 59: tips.
- CRASH issue 49, February 1988, p. 110: news of Revenge of Doh.
- Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The History of Ocean Software (2013): Mike Lamb on the Spectrum version (p. 145); David Collier on the Commodore 64 version (p. 150); Mark Jones on the Commodore 64 graphics (pp. 188–189); Peter Johnson’s BBC Micro version and the arcade board in a suitcase (pp. 204–205); Ron Fowles and Arkanoid 2 (p. 114).
- For Martin Galway’s music and its sources, including ZZAP!64‘s readers’ music chart and The One’s note on Cobra, see the Martin Galway and Ocean Software entries.
- Wikipedia, “Arkanoid” (web, secondary): the arcade release months; Revenge of Doh in 1987; Arkanoid – Eternal Battle in 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkanoid
- Wikipedia, “Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders” (web, secondary): Taito, May 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkanoid_vs._Space_Invaders
- Microids, “Arkanoid – Eternal Battle” (web): the 25-player battle-royale mode. https://www.microids.com/game/arkanoid-eternal-battle/