Previous Next

Who-ho-ho! This looks pretty familiar! Like many a piece of European software, Giganoid is immaculately programmed and very polished, but relies on ripping off established ideas rather than coming up with anything original. In this case, the subject is Arkanoid, the brick-bashing Breakout variant.

Giganoid features fifty screens of pretty background patterns and complex constructions of bricks. As usual, there are several different types of bricks; normal ones, indestructible ones, ones which need to be hit twice, and those which drop spinning canisters when hit. Along the bottom of the screen moves your bat, under mouse, keyboard or joystick control. Just keep the ball bouncing off the bricks, and puck up the canisters for bonus features, such as an extended bat, sticky bat, multiple balls, lasers, extra life and instant exit.

The brick patterns, including floppy disks, computers and geometrical shapes, aren't particularly challenging, though there's the odd tricky one where you have to flip the ball along the top of the formation to get around the indestructible bricks. However, after the first half-a-dozen levels you come to the Demons. Selecting the number of rounds, 1-4 you're faced with four sinister heads, one of which spits out a ball without warning. You get to slip as many levels as you can parry balls.

Further on you'll encounter the Gatekeepers and the Grandmaster, demons which shoot fireballs as you try to hit them.

While Giganoid doesn't feature all the aliens are gimmicks of Arkanoid or Addictaball, it does have some marvellouos sound samples; a horrid growling intro sound, a shout of "Everyone out there, ready?!" before each round, a didgeridoo on the high-score table, and clanging metallic percussion each time the ball hits a brick, the side, or your bat. With several balls in play, the noise starts to sound like a Def Leppard drum solo.

Entirely unoriginal, then, basically an Arkanoid clone, but great fun and smoothly programmed. If you liked Arkanoid or Addictaball, and your life isn't the same since you finished them, Giganoid is well worth a bash.