NZGamer writes: "Once upon a time, Atari thought bouncing a ball into a wall should be more than the pastime of kids at school and immortalised the concept in videogames. The Breakout genre was born. Since then, there have been many tens of thousands of Breakout games; the concept is seemingly a rite of passage for new programmers as much as it is a staple for gamers around the world."
Remember the story in Super Mario Sunshine where Mario convicted for a crime he did not committed on Isle Delfino. His punishment is to clean up the entire island, which Mario is happy to do, he is saving the residents of Isle Delfino and Yoshi after all. In AlphaBounce the story is actually the opposite. You’re playing a prisoner, the higher the difficulty the lesser the sympathy towards the character you’re playing as. The punishment is to clean up the entire galaxy and unlike Mario’s acceptance; you must help the prisoner escape the ordeal by finding the coordinates to Earth. Finally, instead of a platformer, AlphaBounce is an action RPG with a disguise as a block-breaking genre.
Pocket Gamer: The Breakout genre is in dire need of a good old gaming burial – a sending off into the heavens of video game past.
The fact that the concept's roots can be traced back to Pong, one of the earliest video games ever, should be an indication that it's time to move on.
D+PAD Magazine reviews new DSiWare title AlphaBounce, from Mad Monkey Studio.
