Kickoo’s Breakout Review

Kickoo’s Breakout is a slightly more complex variation of the classic Breakout, which was a title on the Atari 2600. The goal of this, as well as all Breakout titles, is to clear the screen of all bricks using a paddle and a ball, without having it fall off of the screen at the bottom.

In Kickoo’s Breakout (KB) you must accomplish clearing the screen of bricks; you do this by moving your paddle left and right. Paddle movement can be done with the stylus, which has a delayed response, the analog stick, which tends to move to the left, even when you aren’t applying pressure, and the left/right action buttons, which are the most reliable, but overly slow.

KB uses many different types of blocks, from typical ones that disappear in one hit, to ones that take multiple hits, and then to ones that are unbreakable. Bricks will sometimes release power-ups, including red and blue balls, which slow or speed up your ball. Other power-ups can shrink or expand the size of your paddle.

The level design was executed near perfectly. Often times, the player will need to aim their ball into a small gap in a wall full of unbreakable bricks. The level designers uniquely developed each level and made them more difficult as the game continued.

In all honesty, KB is not specifically designed for the Zodiac. It originally was made for PDA’s, but has since been improved to fit the Zodiac, taking advantage of the system’s graphical prowess. KB can also be played in either landscape or standard mode, in other words, it can either be played normally or upside down (the screen moves of course).

The graphics are well done. Animations are fluid and the different colored and shaped bricks, power-ups, etc. all look well drawn. The game itself is colorful and well-animated, such as when the ball launches into the playing field.

Although there are plenty of levels to play, many of which you probably will never get to, due to difficult, there is no real replay value, aside from playing the entire thing over. I wish there could have been a list of levels that you could select from, instead of having to begin on the first level all of the time. If you have either played DX Ball for the PC or Breakout way back in the Atari days, KB is a worthy handheld cousin.