It pongs. You won’t want to break it out at a party. Etc.

“It may seem familiar, but it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before!” boasts Taito about Arkanoid DS. However, this isn’t entirely true—I’ve seen plenty of half-baked Breakout games over the years.

The fact remains that Arkanoid was never that good in the first place. Stripped of its shiny graphics, it was just another in a long line of bat-and-ball games, albeit one with a few power-ups and some nice level design. Converted to home systems, it was soon bettered by a slew of contemporaries, including Krakout and Traz, with only the most devout of Arkanoid followers continuing to fly its flag.

Arkanoid DS, however, manages to stamp on even on the rose-tinted glasses of those deluded souls. Vapid layouts combine with graphics that would embarrass a Commodore 64 to make a game that appears more dated than the mid-1980s arcade original. And if you’re waiting for me to say “but at least the gameplay remains intact”, you’re going to be disappointed: of all the Breakout-oriented games I’ve played, this is one of the worst. It’s too easy, far too dull, and you tend to get stuck for ages on the ‘last brick’, something hardly helped by the play area stretching across both DS screens and yet also being extremely narrow.

If Arkanoid DS was a homebrew effort, I wouldn’t be so scornful, but this is a commercial product. And when you compare it against Space Invaders Extreme, you see just how far Arkanoid DS is from being an exciting and essential update.

Arkanoid DS is out now, if you’re interested (read: if you’re a masochist). The Japanese version also comes with a little detachable DS paddle, but the game’s still rubbish.

This is one of the best levels in Arkanoid DS. Seriously.