Game:

Alleyway (1989)

Duration: 7:22

1,501 views

5

Wow... this one hasn't held up well at all. It's really nowhere near as fast as I remember it being, and it's almost infinitely less fun too.

So then, Alleyway. A shameless attempt from Nintendo at cashing in on the then-craze of Arkanoid, Breakout, and all those other action-packed-without-gore "Bat & Ball" games. But without the extra stuff that made those addictive...

ah.

Anyway, here's Mario. For some inexplicable reason, he's not only a plumber that jumps down toilets into magical kingdoms, but also some sort of bizarre astronaut that clambers into a spaceship that can only be described as some sort of space-dildo (yeah, seriously).

What does he do while piloting this unique craft? Why, he slips around in a small opening (dohoho) while batting his balls around (Jesus Christ!!).

Anyway, what makes this game so infuriating?

A number of things, really. First off, the speed. It's slow, but not in the sense that everything crawls around at a low speed. Quite the opposite.

It's slow because it can take forever to make any real progress. The last block on so many levels can take an eternity to finally destroy, and will invariably be the trigger of boredom that will cause of lost lives.

Add to this the lack of powerups. The above problem wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to attack the offending block without having to rely on the broken rebound physics here, that will frequently ignore basic maths and instead ricochet your projectile around at ridiculous angles on such a constant basis that you could swear the game's been programmed to avoid any collisions whatsoever.

But no, broken physics it is, so you spend several minutes just batting your balls around instead. Then you turn the game back on and try to destroy the last block again.

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