It is interesting how one and the same game can sometimes get a completely different reception on different platforms. Krakout is a Breakout clone. It was released shortly after Arkanoid hit the home platforms, the game that gave the decade-old Breakout concept a massive revival. The designers were aware that Krakout would be compared to Arkanoid first and foremost, and while they took over many of the add-ons that Arkanoid had, a rudimentary story, power-ups, a variety of sometimes harmless, sometimes dangerous floating entities, they also strove to make it different. They achieved this mainly by making the bat vertical instead of horizontal and by adding a plethora of possible configurations including speed. The vertical bat may seem trivial but really had deep impact on gameplay. Before I proceed to the different receptions, let me clear up two errors:
On the Commodore 64, Krakout was warmly recieved. It is generally considered one of the three top Breakout clones, along with Arkanoid and TRAZ. Moskwa TV wrote a level editor right in the same year, and home-made levels abound.
As good as Arkanoid. One of the most remembered games from the past if you ask fans for their favorite games. The coders have enriched the breakout-concept with some great ideas. Test it and you will love it.
I don't know what brought me back to this little Breakout clone times and times again. There's nothing outstanding in it. Irritating ingame music, nothing original in the gameplay department, and the graphics look a bit bland, but it's rather fun nevertheless.
There is no indication that Krakout was in any way a different game on the Spectrum. No features were missing. It was not a later port, as TRAZ would be, but was developed parallely and released at the same time. Yet reviewers on this platform unanaimously condemned it, or at least said it was no match to Arkanoid, both when it first came out, and when it was re-released at a reduced price only two years later.
Hmm. Haven't I seen something like this before? What we have here is what might be politely termed an alternative reading of Arkanoid, the updated Breakout that Ocean brought to your Speccy a couple of months back. And why not, you may ask? It's a good idea, so why not let everyone have a go at it? It worked well with Gauntlet—look how many excellent games that little number spawned.
In reworking Arkanoid, the Gremlin team has obviously tried hard not to duplicate it completely. The game is played, for instance, from left to right (or vice versa), not up and down. You have a choice of bat types and speeds and, best of all, ball speeds, which makes it much easier to get going. There are more capsule bonuses, including a shield that protects your rear, and you have to hit them twice to pick them up, rather than catching them as they fall down the screen. The aliens are nastier and can do all sorts of unpleasant things, like freezing your bat and eating your bat (oo-er!) There are more screens too—100, compared to Arkanoid's 31. But the basic game's the same.
And, more importantly, it's not as good. Arkanoid's key is its simplicity—the format's so clever it doesn't need messing about with. Krakout, on the other hand, is horribly fiddly, what with all its thousands of options and everything else cluttering up the screen. And the block layouts just aren't as fiendishly addictive. My main criticism, though, must be reserved for the side-by-side gameplay, which alters the game's balance and seems to have overstrained Gremlin's graphical capabilities. If Krakout were the only game of this type on the market, I'm sure the flags and bunting would now be out. But it's second and very much second best, and if you're going to beg, borrow or blag one of the Breakout lookalikes, you'd be wiser to go for Arkanoid.
- Graphics: 7/10
- Playability: 7/10
- Value for Money: 6/10
- Addictiveness: 5/10
- Overall: 7/10
In 1989, when there was a budget release of Krakout, Marcus Berkmann revised his original review a bit, saying he was at the time completely obsessed with Arkanoid, but not by much. It was better than Traz, he admitted, but Arkanoid was still to be preferred.
This is another Breakout variant following soon after Ocean's Arkanoid tried to breath new life into the old formula. Arkanoid succeeded but unfortunately the same cannot be said of Krakout whose new additions have left it devoid of the appeal of the original game.
Like Arkanoid there's a poor attempt at aplot. In this case you are trying to
outmanouevre the awesome ogre. Of course to accomplish this you must blast your way through wall upon wall of bricks.The additions to the game include expanded bat size, glue bat (where the ball sticks to your bat), missiles, bombs, extra lives etc. These are activated if you succeed in hitting the right block but as you have little control over which block you hit once the ball is on its way, it's all fairly arbitrary. In Arkanoid the activating method was catching falling capsules which added to the complexity of the game.
Another change is that Krakout is played horizontally across the screen rather than the familiar vertical play of Breakout. I can't really see any advantage in this change, in fact it seems to detract from the gameplay.
On the plus side the graphics are very bright, you can vary the speed of the game and there are 100 screens worth of assorted bricks to batter, but in the final analysis it lacks an enduring addictive quality.
This Breakout variant has dated very little—it's still as awful as when we first reviewed it in May 1987.
The player controls a bat to hit the ball which bounces around the play area, destroying colored bricks. However, instead of the bat being at the base of the screen (as in most Breakout-type games), it's at the right-handed side and is moved vertically to stop the ball leaving the screen. Some of the blocks need several hits to be destroyed, while others reveal a special letter, which if hit, activates a special feature. These include a double bat, an expanded bat and glue to make the ball stick to the bat.
Despite some useful options to change the speeds of the bat and ball, Krakout is severely lacking in addictive qualities—the layout of the screens is unimaginative and boredom soon sets in. At only two quid less than its original price (£ 4.99) it isn't recommended.
- Original rating: 46%
- Overall: 37%
There is less information about this version than about the other two—especially, no contemporary reviews can be found on the web. But it seems that the reception was similar to the one the game suffered in the Sinclair community.
It's Breakout time once again! This version really doesn't offer anything different to the others, and it's hard to see how I can recommend it. Unlike most other bat and ball games, the bricks are situated at the left of the screen with the bat on the right (although you can swap them round). You can also customise the game, with six different speeds for the ball and nine for the bat. This is welcome, because the default speeds make the game very hard indeed. Add that to a small playing area, jolly title music that becomes irritating after a few listens, and rather average graphics, and you've got a pretty standard game.—CPC Game Reviews
