The original Arkanoid was a Breakout-like arcade game produced by Taito in the mid-1980s and the frequent recipient of my pocket change, considering that it spent a summer at a local laundromat, and was thus the arcade game nearest to my house. For those few who don’t know this style of game, rectangular or square blocks are arranged at the top third of the screen, and a flat bar-like paddle resides at the bottom, which the player can move left and right. The object of the game is to use the paddle (called a VAUS in Arkanoid-speak) to bounce a ball (called an energy ball) up to hit and knock out the blocks (called...er...blocks). The particular feature that captured my attention in the arcade version was the fact that sometimes when you broke a block, items dropped that bestowed certain powers, such as the elongation of your VAUS, the ability to catch the energy ball and release it at will, and, of course, arming the VAUS with laser blasters. The fun of zapping the blocks after a well-timed laser drop, or the manic frenzy that followed catching the “disruption” power item (thus adding two additional energy balls to the screen) was enough to set this teenager’s adrenaline buzzing.

Enter Arkanoid DS, a slightly re-imagined update to the classic game. As I eyed my tiny game card and the two horizontal screens of my Nintendo DS, my only thought was “How on Earth are they going to pull this off?”

The answer, surprisingly, is, “Very well, thank you very much.”

The Story
It may surprise you that there actually IS a background story associated with Arkanoid, which is told through a text-and-animation introduction. There’s a planet called Arkanoid, defended by 8 heroes. An invading horde opens a rift in space that pulls 7 of the heroes away, leaving just one behind to defend the planet. That’s nice. As with the arcade version, it’s mostly irrelevant to game play, but it does explain the space-related theme to the decor.

Gameplay options
Taito does a nice job with game options, allowing you to play by yourself, play against up to 4 other players through the local wireless connection (up to 30 feet, no additional game cartridge necessary), or against non-local players through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, if you have the necessary wireless access point.

Solo players can choose from all three gameplay options, multi-players can play the third:

1) Clear game, in which you must work your way through 7 different “zones,” each made up of 5 “rounds.” Each round consists of a screen with a new layout of blocks to clear away, and as you advance to each next zone (or group of 5 rounds), there is an increasing level of difficulty. There are multiple zones to choose from at each difficulty level, ensuring a great deal of block layout variety as you play the game over time.

2) Quest game, in which you must clear rounds by satisfying specific objectives, such as “destroy all blue blocks” within a specified time limit. When you complete your mission, you’re rewarded with a certain number of points, which can be used to personalize your game (more on that later). You can only choose quests from rounds that you have cleared during earlier games.

3) vs Com and Multi-player allow you to compete against an opponent, either the computer (vs Com) or another person. You must race to either clear a given round, or destroy specific-colored blocks before your opponent does. You can follow your opponent’s progress in a tiny thumbnail version of his screen, as well as a countdown of how many blocks you both have left to complete the round. In addition to beneficial item drops, you can also catch items that hinder your opponent’s progress, such as “Increase,” which deposits additional blocks on his screen.

Gameplay
As in the original arcade version, you must bounce your energy ball up to hit and destroy the blocks on each screen. Some blocks must be hit more than once, some blocks are permanent and function to get in the way of your energy ball. A few blocks drop items that can help or hinder you in achieving your objective.

I have to admit that I was worried about how this game would play across the two small screens of the Nintendo DS. I think Taito did a remarkable job in keeping the game fun on this platform, using the separation between the two screens as part of the challenge. Your VAUS is near the bottom of the lower screen, and the blocks take up most of the upper screen. The energy ball travels through the plastic dead space of the hinge as if the plastic is merely blocking your view through a window, which makes it easy to track once you get the hang of it. More difficult levels tend to set the blocks closer to the bottom of the upper screen, and therefore closer to the plastic partition, which adds to the challenge of mentally keeping track of where the ball will hit, and how quickly and from where it will bounce back. The more difficult levels also set the side walls closer to each other in width, causing your ball to quickly gain speed as it careens wildly against them and making it difficult to position your VAUS in such a way as to change the ball’s trajectory.

There are a couple of other changes from the arcade game. Rather than having multiple lives to draw from every time you miss an energy ball, there is now a “barrier” underneath your VAUS. In normal mode, the energy ball can bounce on the barrier three times before the barrier disappears. When you miss the energy ball a fourth time, you lose the game. Luckily, if you’re playing “Clear game” you have the opportunity to continue playing, which saves your place so you don’t have to replay all the zones you’ve already cleared if you’re trying to get to the end. One of my favorite new items is the “Megaball,” which causes the energy ball to transform into a comet, smashing through multiple blocks at once, bouncing only after hitting a wall rather than after hitting a block.

Bonus goodies
There is also an option to “buy” decorations for your screens using the game points you earned through game play. You can choose from different backgrounds, frames, music, etc. and apply them to whichever zones you’d like. It’s a cute way to personalize your game, although I haven’t found a way to preview available music. The music is also decent, for a video game. It’s a kind of unobtrusive, upbeat techno-jazz for the most part, that’s played at a good volume for background music. Just loud enough to be there, but not so loud that it interferes with game play.

All in all, I’d recommend this game to anyone who pines for the old days of simply just playing a game. It’s a well done remake of an old classic.