ARKANOID

Getting the big question out of the way: does it feel like an Arkanoid pinball table? The answer, sadly, is not at all. Though not for a lack of effort. The 4 x 5 cluster of twenty drop targets just doesn’t have a brick-breaker quality to it. It COULD have, but the unfathomable decision was made to reset the cluster every lost ball. In fact, everything is reset between balls. You’ll note the video game itself doesn’t even do this. You don’t have to start every level of Arkanoid from the beginning if you die, and that makes us wonder how much Magic Pixel even played the source material before turning Black Pyramid of all tables into Arkanoid. By the way, Pyramid’s central target was one of the most famous swinging targets in pinball. Replacing that with drop targets would be like replacing the SuperCharger in Getaway with.. well, drop targets. Another problem is that the “bricks” are undervalued and de-incentivized. Why would anyone shoot these high risk targets that hang right over the drain for 1,000 points each when the low-risk spinners on the side score the same or higher AND also give you a shot at landing the ball in the saucer, which could light the massive 10x bonus multiplier? Yes, the value of those bricks goes up but only if you pop all twenty, without draining. It’s just too many drop targets for such a fast-running, bouncy, high difficulty table. Maybe if your progress carried-over between balls, it might be a viable strategy, but we’ll never know, apparently. Otherwise, Arkanoid’s layout is pretty good, even if the outlanes are on an all-steel diet. Arkanoid is NOT a beginners’ table, but fans of defense-heavy tables that still manage to maintain a faster pace (like Oscar and Sasha the Kid) should really enjoy this table’s flow. In fact, the layout is so good we initially had it pegged as a shoe-in for a Certificate of Excellence. But the illogical scoring, and not the high difficulty, undermine its potential. You know, Magic Pixel, it’s nothing a patch couldn’t fix. AtGames and Magic Pixel could even do an entire marketing campaign based around updating all their older pins with new, enlightened rules. Arkanoid is pretty good, but that’s really frustrating because it should be a classic, and it’s not.
Set: Taito Pinball Pack 3
Type: Zaccaria Solid State – Rebuild
Design DNA: Black Pyramid by Bally (1984)
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 411,900
Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Angela: GOOD
Oscar: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Sasha the Kid: GREAT
Scoring Average: 3.5 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD