Arkanoid DS - Preorder

Taito revived the Atari "Breakout" brand in a big way in 1986. That was when Arkanoid reached arcades and swept across Japan and the USA like brushfire. The game's gist is this: Players control a paddle which bats a ball which in turn smacks into colored bricks above. The aim of the game is to clear the bricks on each stage with the ultimate goal of reaching and destroying an entity known as DOH. Since hitting bricks ain't easy, power capsules would occasionally drop from broken bricks to imbue the paddle with laser fire or magnetic force. Conditional modifiers would also drop which slowed down the velocity of the ball or split it into three balls.

We were hooked on Arkanoid from the get-go and it would take NCS about a decade before we had the wherewithal to buy a pristine condition machine along with an Arkanoid II cab for the 'ol private collection. Taito announced Arkanoid DS a couple of months ago but it was only over the past weekend that preorders were finally opened up in Japan. The NDS Arkanoid game features 140 stages and a Wifi multiplayer mode. A Quest Mode and new BGM soundtracks are also mentioned in the preorder details but we'll flesh out our product synopsis once we go through the game and take the usual notes.

Along with the Arkanoid DS game, Taito is also releasing a dedicated paddle controller which plugs into the GBA slot on the Nintendo DS or Nintendo DS Lite. Two editions of the game and four separately sold paddle controllers are open for preorder today through the following links:

» Arkanoid DS [Game Only]
» Arkanoid DS with White Paddle Controller
» Paddle Controller [Black]
» Paddle Controller [Pink]
» Paddle Controller [Silver]
» Paddle Controller [White]

Preorders will ship on December 6, 2007.