27. Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh
Back in 1977, when I was still a young and sprightly lad, my favorite jazz trumpeter Chet Baker released an album entitled "You Can't Go Home Again". Sometimes that adage applies to birthplaces, and other times it applies to video games. Without getting too sentimental off-the-bat, I think we both know where this review is headed.
Now, I will say I played quite a bit of Taito's Arkanoid series growing up, but it wasn't on a Commodore 64. I plunked plenty a quarter into the original Arkanoid and its rotary paddle control at the local arcade before finally finding a home port on my Amiga 500 using the chunky tank mouse as a controller. The Pong/Breakout formula from which Arkanoid borrows is about as simple and addictive a gaming experience as you can find, and my friends and I played it almost compulsively for a time.
Flash forward to present day, and nostalgia led me to take up the paddle once more. Like clockwork, a copy of 1988's sequel Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh for the Commodore 64 arrived on my doorstep, begging for a revisit. (I guess a team of furniture movers rolling up with a coin-op would've been ideal, but compromises are sometimes necessary in life).
To Revenge of Doh's credit, the graphics are pretty good (if, predictably, not arcade-perfect or as polished as my treasured Amiga port), and we get a broad selection of 33 levels with varying backgrounds and unique block layouts. The game negotiates the C64's limited screen resolution and color palette well, and nothing looks stretched, dithered, or otherwise wacky. The little bit of music that is present in the game is decent (though none of it plays while gameplay is ongoing), and the sound effects are a decent reproduction of the coin-ops repertoire. The controls are fine, though there's little room for this element to go awry, as you're basically either moving left or moving right. Surprisingly, Revenge of Doh doesn't support the rotary paddles used by the original, though the game works well with a joystick and also supports the not-so-common Commodore 1351 mouse.
Beyond the attractive exterior, spend a bit more time with Revenge of Doh and you unfortunately start to notice some flaws creeping in. At it's core, the game is fun, but threadbare - you're playing pong with a wall that never loses, and there are bricks between your paddle and that wall that you need to clear. While the game does its best to incorporate a variety of different mechanics to increase its depth and replay, these additions often backfire and make you wish they weren't included. For instance, let's discuss power-ups, which are randomly knocked loose from bricks. Once you get a handle on the purpose of the many power-up drops (which usually only takes a few levels' worth of play), you'll only want to pick up one or two of them, though very few are actually detrimental. Beyond the aforementioned laser, or an occasional poison-pill that makes your ship smaller, most are just middling affairs that don't do much to influence the gameplay either way. Just one man's opinion: Power-ups that no one cares to pick up probably shouldn't be on-screen in the first place. To make matters worse, said power-ups can quickly pile up while falling from the top of the screen, leading you to inadvertently grab "upgrades" that hurt your chances of completing a level.
For a game that ideally should be fast-paced and exciting, Revenge of Doh can frequently become outright tedious once a large portion of bricks are cleared and you're left to hit one straggling block that never seems to find its way into the path of the ball. There's little risk of losing, but it sure takes a while to do any winning. I didn't recall this being such an issue in the past, and I don't know if I simply forgot how slow-paced this game *could* be, or if I never really noticed it until moving on to more modern games. If you can't equip the laser power-up to shoot through any scattered bricks (or if the bricks are hidden behind unbreakable barriers), the inconsistent physics and constantly regenerating enemies-as-obstacles can make it nearly impossible to pick off single bricks onscreen. You may clear one level in 20 or 30 seconds with the help of the very-overpowered laser power-up, then the next level takes 15 minutes because a single block just doesn't want to be hit. It's equal-parts frustrating and soporific, and it's far too easy to lull yourself into making mistakes (or just flick the power switch and walk away) out of distaste for repetition.
This is not to say that Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh is the worst game that I've played on the C64, or even an outright bad one, but it's definitely one of the most disappointing, and, dare I say it, overrated. Without having played a ton of Arkanoid clones, I'm wagering that there are better interpretations of this sub-genre available elsewhere in the Commodore library, as the concept itself is great. However, execution also matters, and you might say that Revenge of Doh "bricks" its pants under the pressure of its reputation.
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