Arkanoid

Arkanoid is a block breaker video game. Its plot involves the starship Arkanoid being attacked by a mysterious entity from space named DOH. A small paddle-shaped craft, the Vaus, is ejected from the Arkanoid.

The player controls the Vaus with a control knob, moving it from side to side in order to hit a ball into a pattern of bricks and destroy them. After all bricks have been destroyed, the player advances to the next level and faces a new pattern. Most bricks can be destroyed in one hit; some require multiple hits, and others cannot be destroyed at all. Some bricks release capsules that bestow various power-ups when caught, such as increasing the length of the Vaus, temporarily slowing the ball down, or granting an extra life. Floating enemies/obstacles emerge onto the screen at times and can be hit for bonus points.

Arkanoid was designed by Akira Fujita and Hiroshi "ONIJUST" Tsujino, both of whom were members of Taito's Yokohama Research Institute. The company's sales department requested a new block breaker arcade game due to the genre seeing an upturn in popularity following a steady downfall in the early 1980s. This led to a competition being held within the company to design the new game, which was jointly won by Fujita and Tsujino, who were then instructed to combine their ideas into a single project. The game builds on the overall block breaker concept established in Atari's Breakout (1976), a widely successful arcade game that spawned a long series of similar clone games by other manufacturers.

The development team consisted of Fujita in charge of planning, with Tsujino providing level design and graphics and two others programming the arcade board, a modified version of the Taito Classic hardware. The futuristic neon aesthetic was inspired by the film Tron (1982), which Tsujino was a big fan of. Blocks originally never had colors and were simply the same color, which was changed to the minor annoyance of Tsujino. The various geometric-like enemies and power-up items were hand-drawn from 3-dimensional models before being converted into sprite art. Hisayoshi Ogura, the founder of Taito's "house band" Zuntata, created the game's music.

Arkanoid became one of Taito's most profitable coin-operated games. In Japan, Game Machine listed it as being the most popular arcade game of August 1986, and it remained the top-grossing table arcade cabinet for six months through September, October, November and December 1986, up until February 1987. Arkanoid was Japan's highest-grossing table arcade game during the second half of 1986, and the overall sixth highest-grossing table arcade game of 1986. It later went on to be the country's overall highest-grossing table arcade game of 1987.

In the United States, it was the highest-grossing arcade conversion kit of 1987. In the United Kingdom, it was the fourth highest-grossing arcade game of 1986 on London's Electrocoin charts. Euromax listed it as being the third most popular arcade game in Europe during 1987.

Arkanoid was followed by a number of direct and indirect sequels. Tournament Arkanoid was released in 1987 exclusively in the United States by Romstar. Developed by Taito America rather than Taito Japan, it has the same gameplay as Arkanoid, but adds new levels. Revenge of Doh, a true sequel with new gameplay mechanics, was released in arcades in 1987. Arkanoid: Doh It Again and Arkanoid Returns were published in 1997, followed by Arkanoid DS in 2007.

Arkanoid Live! was published as on May 6, 2009, for Xbox Live Arcade. The WiiWare game Arkanoid Plus! was released in the same year in Japan on May 26, PAL regions on August 21, and in North America on September 28. A version of Arkanoid for iOS was released in 2009.