Producer: Pirate Software
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Eugene Morris

Budget Breakout addict Commander Zeplan finds himself and his ship trapped in the volcano-like world at a planet's core. Zeplan's only chance of escape is to deploy the side of the ship as a bat, moving it horizontally, and deflect the globules of boiling plasma toward the strata of the planet's crust above.

The separate rectangular blocks that make up each stratum are destroyed on contact with the plasma, and for each block destroyed points are awarded.

If the ship is moved too lethargically or inaccurately, the plasma is not deflected, and one of the ship's five lives is lost.

Different blocks have different characteristics. Some, when hit by the plasma, change its size and speed; others alter the condition of the ship. If Zeplan does not fall foul of their idiosyncrasies, he may yet progress ever upward through the different levels and once more see the light of day.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: below-average even in Breakout circles
Sound: hardly worth the effort...
Options: screen editor

This certainly isn't an original game concept, and there isn't much difference between this version and the first hand-held game you could buy. It'd be difficult to recreate this ancient game as something exciting and new, but I can imagine someone developing basic hand-and-eye coordination being attracted to Smash Out!'s smooth, colourful graphics.
BYM [17%]

What is this? Okay, so Breakout clones may be back in style, but one of this quality? The control is sluggish, the graphics are simplistic and dull, and though I thought a lot of Batty I rate Smash Out! as about ten times worse than Arkanoid. Boring and badly-implemented, it doesn't even try to be anything different.
MIKE [10%]

If Pirate Software keeps on producing dross like this, I can't see the new label staying in business for long. Smash Out! is just about up to the standards of a bad type-in listing - but only because of the addition of a screen editor. Thru The Wall (free with a rubber-keyed Spectrum) looks like a masterpiece in technical achievement compared to this tommyrot.
PAUL [5%]

Label: Pirate
Author: In-house
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Forget all the plop on the insert, this is a Breakout done with stunningly average graphics and a few good sound effects. While the movement is fairly smooth, the bat flickers perceptibly, and the screen layouts are dullsville.

However, to pep things up, you can design your own screens, using the cursor keys to select and place various typos of block, which can include squares which reverse the controls, double the size of the bat or increase its speed. There's also a magic square which if hit completes a level.

A bit of an insult to the intelligence compared with products like Arkanoid, but at this price the screen designer might tempt you to give it a bash.

Spectrum Cassette: £1.99

NEW BALLS PLEASE

Balls are a bit 'in' at the moment. Especially, it would appear, when they are smashing multicoloured bricks to pieces. Breakout clones are suddenly appearing in vast quantities and spreading faster than Wordstar or Knight Lore clones did. Richard Eddy gives a personal run-down...

Taito, the company which produced the corky coin-op Arkanoid, are probably to blame for unleashing the craze, and then Ocean for producing a series of very competent conversions for the home micros. The ST version is undoubtedly the superior, retaining all of the arcade's original features - if it wasn't for the small screen you could almost think it was the arcade original. Imagine have just released it for the IBM PC.

Following in Ocean's footsteps came Gremlin's Krackout, which was somewhat jollier but slower and really didn't have the addictiveness Arkanoid provided.

Not to be outdone Elite shoved in their fourpenneth in the shape of Batty which now features on Hit Pak 2. Written by an ex-Ultimate programmer, Batty was polished and showed greater graphical sophistication than Arkanoid. And then everyone breathed a sigh of relief thinking that it was over...

'Not on your nelly!' shouted Audiogenic, Alligata, Pirate and CRL in unison, all proffering their latest versions which are: Impact, Addictaball, Smash Out! and Ball Breaker.

Apart from the games, comparing inlay storylines proves most interesting. Pirate's budget Smash Out! goes for a desperately-try-to-be-convincing story where the bat is supposed to be a spaceship lost in space and bricks are blobs of plasma, while Ball Breaker claims the ball is some chappie called Ovoid on a mission of annihilation. Personally I prefer Impact's 'Trapped in a 1970s arcade machine...' or Alligata's straight for the throat approach with '...I have difficulty imagining a bat is a spaceship... so let's call things a bat, ball and bricks - it's much easier!' And so it is.

I think you can quite happily disregard Smash Out; it is little more than a poor man's Arkanoid with measly graphics, nauseous sound and the addictiveness of drying paint. Okay, so it may have screen designer thrown in, but even this is fiddly to use and does nothing to push up Smash Out's credibility.

NOVELTY

There's a lesson to learn here - if you are going to produce a clone you have to do it very well, or devise a novel twist on the formula. Which is what CRL did with Ball Breaker, originally released for the Amstrad CPC range, it took Breakout into 3-D and worked well with some great sound effects and a colourful layout. Ball Breaker is just released for the Spectrum and retains its playability - although to avoid colour clash the monochromatic graphics can make it difficult to see exactly where to position your bat. Complete with all the typical features, it also includes a laser gun which stays with you throughout the game. Ball Breaker adds up to a worthwhile buy if you fancy a different twist on the rest - and soon to be available on the Atari ST and Amiga.

Audiogenic, quiet for some time, return to our 16-bit screens with the elaborate Impact for the Atari ST and Amiga (and hopefully soon for the Spectrum and Commodore 64/128). Impact is quite the connoisseur's Arkanoid cleverly topped off by some great sounds (each brick, alien and the bat produces an individual sound, so occasionally it sounds like a decent tune gone wonky!). Graphically, it is what you would expect from 16-bit, utilising colour very well and sharp definition to add that extra bit of class to the aliens.

THE LARGEST

What gives it that little extra push is the novel way in which features, such as lasers, bat expand and catch are collected - a la Nemesis. Yellow tokens spin down from selected bricks when destroyed and, if collected, are stored in the power select pad at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Pressing the mouse button when one is collected makes the ball slow down, collecting two and then pressing the button gives you the catch effect and so on through divide (3 balls), expand, torch (to see hidden bricks), laser, smart bomb (to destroy aliens), missile and forcefield, which doesn't have the rebound effect off bricks, but simply continues to smash its way round the screen until hitting a wall where it bounces off.

With 80 screens and 48 more you can design yourself using the easy-to-use screen designer, Impact definitely wins my approval as being the best just for sheer addictiveness.

But coming a close second is Addictaball from Alligata, which doesn't quite make it to the very top for the simple reason that it falls down on presentation and graphics. The use of colour is very dull on the first levels - mainly greys, greens, and blues used for the bricks and surroundings - which doesn't do much to create an exciting atmosphere.

However, Addictaball proves to be quite novel in the way the bricks slowly scroll down the screen in one long trail - its great saving grace. The trail can prove to be frustrating when, having died, you are returned to the beginning, or one of the internal stages within a level. Two weapons, laser gun and thruster (which allows you to move up and down the screen) can be collected at the very beginning, though they have to be replenished frequently by hitting the correct bricks.

Along the bottom of the screen is a barrier preventing the ball from disappearing but this gradually gets destroyed by the shower of fireballs which come down the screen, unless the fireballs are destroyed with the bat before they reach the bottom. There are cars, bikes and the like to be battered along the way which, if nothing else, adds a bit of humour to the game.

So, now what? Do we dare breathe a sigh of relief or is the next parcel we open going to be Revenge Of The Mutant Bouncing Balls From Jupiter...?

STOP PRESS! No relief breathing yet! We have just received Reflex from Players priced at £1.99 for the MSX...!