Impact
Audiogenic Software Ltd. (A.S.L.) of the U.K. released Impact aka Blockbuster for Amiga and Atari ST in 1987. Published by Digital Integration, Impact is a bat-and-ball block-breaker influenced by Taito's Arkanoid coinop of 1986.
Refer to the Arkanoid article for the basics of Arkanoid-style block-breaker gameplay.
Impact features 9 weapons, 80 levels and allows for the creation of 48 more via the Impact Screen Designer. Every 10 levels a password is given that can be used on the titlescreen to warp directly to higher levels.
Impact replaces the Arkanoid capsules with golden u-shaped tokens that can be used to purchase power-ups. The power-ups can be viewed in an icon-cluster and are selected by right-clicking, which can result in their strategic employment. For example, activate 3-ball disruption when splitting the ball into three is likely to cause maximum block-breaking. Unspent tokens confer bonus points at end-level. Each power-up has a token-cost and some power-ups can be used simultaneously.
Impact block-types include single-hit blocks, multi-hit blocks, indestructible blocks, reflective blocks and bonus blocks.
Different musical notes are played when the ball strikes the blocks, which is impressive.
Impact Power-Ups
- Slowdown: 1 token (Arkanoid: Slow)
- Magnet: 2 tokens (Arkanoid: Catch)
- Divide: 3 tokens (Arkanoid: Disrupt)
- Wide: 4 tokens (Arkanoid: Expand)
- Torch: 5 tokens (novel)
- Laser: 6 tokens (Arkanoid: Twin-laser)
- Smart bomb: 7 tokens (novel)
- Missile: 8 tokens (novel)
- Force Field: 9 tokens (Arkanoid 2: Armor-piercing ball)
ST/Amiga Impact displays in 16-color 320x200 and features 200K of sampled sound. The Amiga version is a direct port of the ST version.
The ST/Amiga versions of Impact were programmed by John Dale and drawn by Spiny Norman. Amiga Impact was distributed on 1x 3.5" 880kB DD diskette whereas ST Impact was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette. Neither version was installable to hard disk drive.
cf. Block-breakers:
Indexes:
- Addicta Ball Atari ST Alligata Software 1987
- Arkanoid Amiga Discovery Software 1988
- Arkanoid 2 Amiga Imagine Software 1988
- Giganoid Amiga Starvision 1988
- Jinks Amiga Rainbow Arts 1988
- Krakout Commodore 64 Gremlin Graphics 1987
- Bolo Atari ST Meinolf Schneider 1987
Indexes:
- Amiga Games Reviews (Index to all Amiga game reviews)
- Computer Game Reviews (Index to all computer game reviews)
- History of Computer Games (Master Index)
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