Reveal bricks make all dark blue bricks breakable. Explosive bricks destroy adjacent bricks and can be used to cause chain reactions when in close proximity to each other. Dark blue bricks can’t be destroyed without the fire-ball power up. This goes on with each color for a total of five. Green bricks turn into light blue bricks when you hit them and then can be destroyed in one hit. Light blue bricks can be destroyed in one hit. Five of those can be destroyed without power ups but have different levels of endurance. There are six different basic bricks, differentiated by color. The ball can change direction sporadically during combos and that will ultimately be your downfall. But you will get used to it with practice. You will at first have trouble lining up the paddle in sharper situations. All controller types work in Brick Breaker and they are all very effective due to the simplicity of the controls. You also use the fire button to shoot the gun when you get that power up. It’s just brick breaking so you launch the ball with one of two fire buttons and then move the paddle with the stick or d-pad to hit the ball back up towards the bricks when it comes down. The placement is extremely well-balanced. I was especially impressed by the multiplayer layouts used for games with more than two players. Outside of the lag, Brick Breaker is a pretty decent looking game for as simple as it is. The loading times when starting and ending modes isn’t great either. This happened to me in several different levels. In normal play you won’t experience any problems, but in certain stages where you can create large chain reaction combos, the screen will lag considerably often causing you to lose track of the ball and ultimately lose a life. Unlike with Tetraminos, I can’t say that this game runs completely smoothly. The font used for all text is an easy to read block text appearing in white or yellow in most cases. In the middle you see your combo which disappears when it ends and then quickly reappears when it starts up again. On the top right you have score and ball speed. You have level and lives in block text in the top left of the screen. They have a clean texture and fit together well, which isn’t that impressive in the first place. The bricks come in many different colors and a number of different types. As this is a simple brick breaking game, the gameplay isn’t that fancy looking. The menus are exactly the same as those in Tetraminos, with smooth-edged boxes and block text. Making use of mostly blues, but also some green and purple as well, the game’s main menu and few backgrounds are a blend of constantly moving patterns that look simple, but actually have a decent amount of detail. The game has a mildly sci-fi feel to it with a smooth finish. Visually, it’s very close to Tetraminos, another game I recently reviewed in the collection. What I didn’t realize till I started up Brick Breaker is that it’s actually meant to be played as part of a retro games collection by Sanuk Games. This modern supped up version blows that old edition out of the water in just about every way. It took me literally two years before I had mastered all the stages of the Windows version of the game. Then it was an easily found browser title that I used to play in the library at school. I remember when Brick Breaker, also referred to as Javanoid by many old schoolers like myself, was a default Windows game. Today’s classic is Brick Breaker by Sanuk Games. Oh what a wonderful time to be a gamer where new and old are intertwined through a system of convenient digital downloads. Again I find myself playing remakes and ports of classic games from my childhood on modern consoles.
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