Blow The Cartridge

So what if it was basically an overblown Breakout, Arkanoid was the killer app that sold me on the idea of using a mouse to control a game. Sure, you could play it well enough with a joystick but if you wanted total control you really needed to play it with a mouse.

Thanks to the simplicity of the game (I mean really, it was just a bat and ball game that you could make yourself in an afternoon) there wasn’t a bad home conversion. Even the Spectrum had a great version of Arkanoid! Chances are whatever you’re reading this on has a version of Arkanoid available for it. The DS had a neat one that came with a paddle you plugged into the GBA cartridge port – I thought it was funny we came so far along with technology that we went back to playing games with a paddle.

Anyway, it was the Amiga version that was the business back in the day. It looked just like the Arcade game, as long as you don’t mind a third of the screen being devoted to a bunch of logos and junk. But you got to play it with the mouse, and it felt glorious, and it made me mad I didn’t own an Amiga yet.