Previous Next

Impact from ASL is a product of the current vogue for dusting down the old classic arcade games, sprucing them up a bit and hoping to gain the nostalgia vote.

This particular classic variant is a version of Break Out, now converted from the Atari ST over to the Amiga. It's a case of directly porting it across, rather than specifically rewriting for the Amiga, and thus looks remarkably similar to the ST version (rather more so than true Amiga games should do).

You would think that by now a definitive version of Break Out would have been released - and for those Amiga owners who suspect that might be Arkanoid, bear in mind that Ocean/Imagine is still undecided whether to bring Arkanoid out for the Amiga or whether to concentrate on new titles.

Impact, however, is a very smooth and neat rendition, with some nice additional touches. If there is still anyone out there who doesn't know the genre: you control a ship, missile base, coloured block - or whatever the plot has decided for this particular version - which you manoeuvre across the bottom of the screen, bouncing balls/weapons/bombs off its surface to rebound off coloured bricks arranged in patterns in the top half of the screen. Hit all the blocks so that they disappear, and move on to the next screen with a different pattern. Very simple, very playable.

Additional features in Impact include extra falling balls/bombs/swirly things to be caught on your base block for bonuses, plus U-shaped tokens which drop out of the screen. Collect enough of these and you will gain extra powers: more balls to bounce around the screen, extra width to your Base "ship", missiles to fire at the blocks, and so on. There are also some invisible blocks to be located and knocked out before the screens can be completed.

Chief among Impact's distinguished features are the digitised sound and the construction set option. The sound effects were justly praised on the Atari ST version, and they have been ported directly across to the Amiga. The construction set lets you design your own brick arrangement - in addition to the eighty screens contained within the game.

Impact's background scrolling is pretty and the blocks clearly defined, which is no more or less than you would expect on the Amiga, although the graphics are cetainly not of the "you'll really believe a man can fly" variety. At times the screen gets a bit cluttered - what with the patterned bricks, swirly bonuses, two or three balls juggling around the screen at once, a celestial-type scrolling backdrop, your own missiles and mystery U-shaped tokens falling out all over the place. Sure, it's all part of the game, but trying to decipher which of these whizzing objects is yours is panic-inducing.

If you bought your Amiga to play games with graphics that should be in the National Portrait Gallery, stereo sound to wear headphones to, innovative thought-provoking gameplay, etc, then you won't want to have anything to do with Impact, and the packaging makes no bones about it: "Trapped in a 1970s arcade game" it proudly proclaims on the inlay. Impact should be filed firmly under "golden oldie".