It was a difficult moment at the Arkanoid starship command centre. Radar operators were speechless and their faces showed clear signs of astonishment. The radar started to track the presence of some unidentified starship (or something similar) approaching since a bunch of minutes. Every attempt to communicate with the alien object failed.

Arkanoid had no defense weaponry on board, and wouldn't be able to avoid a possible attack... well that sector had actually been declared secure by the Interplanetarian Exploration Bureau and the mission had a purely scientific purpose. So why should they be attacked?

The time was about to come. Arkanoid was to be intercepted in a few seconds. The mysterious alien starship was now visible on the screens: it was a small interceptor moving extremely fast... a few seconds more and it would be there.

The alien ship attacked Arkanoid as soon as it was near enough. No chance to escape for the personnel, all they could do was to launch the Vaus, a cylindrical single-seater ship used to scout planet surfaces. Well aware that the end was at hand, the crew let the fate decide who was to fly away on board of the Vaus.

In the meantime, the alien ship opened a breach on their craft... after a few seconds the Vaus exited at unimaginable speed, with its hopeful pilot on board. Then Arkanoid exploded... The cylindrical module crossed the space for an undefined timeperiod - quite short probably, but the pilot then told it seemed an eternity to him...

Suddenly the black and silent space transformed into something unbelievable to the eyes of the pilot... a blue flat plane made of hexagonally-shaped tiles. A barrier was in front of him, looking like a wall made of green bricks. After a few seconds of astonishment, he understood he was inside of a sort of arena, surrounded by a metallic structure. Some alien entity had probably decided to enjoy himself with the only survivor of the Arkanoid spaceship, by teleporting him to a new dimension.

The audio receiver inside of the cockpit revealed the presence of an audio message coming from the outside. The pilot activated the device and listened to what the voice had to say. One more surprise, wow! He was told that an energy ball was about to be introduced into the arena, and it could be used to destroy the wall and help Vaus make the way to freedom. But the ball couldn't be let go behind the Vaus or it would be lost forever. Let the challenge begin.

Arkanoid is an updated version of the old classic, Breakout. The game concept is extremely simple: smashing all bricks in the wall by using a bat and a ball. There are two available directions for your bat: left and right (you operate it by a paddle). Fire button is used to launch the ball at the beginning of the round or to release a laser beam (when equipped).

Destroyed bricks not just gives a varying score from 50 to 120 points, but also sometimes release a coloured pill marked with a letter, which goes down the screen. If your Vaus touches it, something happens depending on colour and letter:

There are two doors on the top part of the arena, and geometrically-shaped alien ships use them to enter the playground. All they do is disturb the action by making the energy ball change direction in order to make you go crazy in an attempt to recover it! They can be destroyed by the touch of the ball itself, by a laser beam or by colliding with the Vaus.

Coloured bricks can be destroyed by a single hit of the energy ball, while the silverish ones need to be touched more times (and the number of hits increases as game progresses). Golden bricks can't be destroyed and they are a real problem since they often "protect" common bricks from being destroyed by the ball.

You have to complete 32 levels before facing the final boss. Then there he is: Doh, looking like a stone-face of the Easter Island (Chile). Your weapon is the usual energy ball which you have to throw at him for a number of times. In case of victory everything will be back to normality: time rewinds to the very beginning of this story - no attack to the Arkanoid ship, no explosion, no escape on board of Vaus. You'll then be ready for another intergalactic adventure...