Written for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga by John Dale with graphics by Martin "Spiny Norman" Day. Originally released by Audiogenic in 1987. Also published as "Blockbuster" in North America by Mindscape.
Acorn BBC Micro/Electron conversion written by Gary Partis (in 1987). Amstrad CPC conversion programmed by Keith Prosser and Nigel Alderton; graphics by Dean Lester; sounds by Andy Williams. Commodore 64 conversion written by Steve Snake. IBM-PC compatibles conversion written by Brian Cotton. Sinclair ZX Spectrum conversion written by Steven Tucker.
All the conversions published by Audiogenic (EU) and Mindscape (US) in 1988.
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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS
I haven't made nearly enough comparisons of breakout-clones, perhaps because there aren't that many breakout games that have all that many versions of, apart from one. Obviously, I still haven't picked any of the Arkanoid games, because they still have too many versions to bother, but just so this wouldn't be too simple, I managed to pick a game that is available for IBM-PC compatibles, but doesn't work in DOSbox, so this should be interesting. Impact, with an exclamation mark, is a relatively unknown beast, that tends to generate wildly opposing opinions, but are the opinions more based on the played versions or is the game just an acquired taste in a more general sense?
