There were countless Arkanoid clones directly after the release of this game, especially on the Amiga. For many, Impact! (released in the US as Blockbuster) was by far the best. A good deal of its attraction came from the creative use of sound samples, which is why it was not quite as successful on other platforms. Sampling, at the time, was still an Amiga monopoly.
Later, John Dale and Spiny Norman would found The Assembly Line and create the smash hit Pipe Mania.
Sounds! The authors obviously got carried away by the sampling technology (still a novelty among home computers circa '87), and enhanced the game with the wackiest assortment of sound effects to come out of Paula. I don't know which of John Dale or Spiny Norman saw the parallel between breakout and structure in music… but bless them anyway! Thanks to them, the game sounds like the silliest muzak with lead guitar marimba bricks and a rhythm guitar bat, accompanied by powerup percussions and alien explosions. After all the mayhem, it's just icing on the cake that thedeathnote sounds like a piccolo screaming.
Impact is a quite decent Breakout clone by Audiogenic with simple graphics but they do their job quite well. The bonus-system works a bit different to the usual Arkanoid way, in that you pick up anextra-increaseritem and click the mouse button, when you want to activate one—as seen in the arcade shoot'em up Nemesis. I remember this game as being one of those two or three games a year that were reviewed for the IBM-PC back then in my favorite computer games magazine ASM.
