The first successful video game ever returns - with a
little bit of eye candy and a few modern-day twists thrown in for good measure.
The object of the game is simple: the player with the highest score wins.
(Hasbro Interactive/Atari, 1999)
Okay. I sat by calmly as Pac-Man and
Q*Bert embarked on new, 90s style quests. That, I
could handle. I was a little more skeptical of trying to assign an actual
storyline to Space Invaders, but I gave it a
chance, and it's a blast. But you mean to tell me someone's trying to revive
Nolan Bushnell's Pong for the 90s?!?
Yep, it's true. Pong now has power-ups.
Oh God, but I'm getting old.
The original Pong was a classic, and there's a reason it was such a
hit in arcades and bars - its simplicity, and its ability to pit two players
against each other. That made it challenging enough without worrying about such
constructed obstacles as penguins, rolling logs, and circular, single-player
screens. Pong was a success because of the beauty of simplicity.
I admire the designers, programmers and artists who revive arcade classics.
I truly do. But in this case, they revised a game that didn't need revising.
Pong becomes more confusing with shifting 3-D playing fields, and little
penguins and power-up tops that deflect or otherwise affect the
"ball."
On the up side: those 3-D graphics are at least well handled (for the most
part), and the baby-basic origins of Pong are acknowledged in the
humorous touch of the childlike giggles and coos of the two players' onscreen
paddles. All things considered, I guess I should be glad that the paddles
weren't transformed into more heavily anthropomorphized characters.
The controllers guide the action smoothly, though I tend to deactivate the
vibration so I don't have to get a little kick every time the ball makes contact
with my paddle.
If I have one complaint, it is that I have yet to see any evidence that the
original Pong is truly emulated anywhere in Pong: The Next Level.
I can't imagine they ran out of disk space for an emulation of a game that used
to run off of a single Texas Instruments integrated circuit in 1972.
Rating:
Three quarters - worth repeat play, but with some annoying features that
might alienate less patient arcade veterans.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
Three quarters - worth repeat play, but with some annoying features that
might alienate less patient arcade veterans.
