arkurses: Harder, better, faster, stronger

I have to give credit to Ander again, for patching arkurses and improving it drastically as a result.

 

Not that arkurses was in any way broken before the patch; as far as I can tell, the only change it to extend your paddle, and make it a little easier to stay in the game. That shorter paddle was murder. 😉

And as a text-based rendition of the classic Arkanoid arcade game, arkurses itself manages to stay faithful to the original style, while adding a few small bonuses of its own. Rebound angles appear to mimic what appeared in the original, keeping in mind the limitations of the medium. But the last block on a screen, for example, will shriek in fear at being left all alone, then try to evade your efforts. It’s amusing … or at least it was to me. 🙄

arkurses has difficulty levels, which seem to correspond mostly to the starting rows of blocks. There are speed controls, and a nice popup help box. Controls are fairly obvious, with the left and right arrow keys doing most of the work.

arkurses may need a little help here and there, but nothing drastic. If you’re intolerant of games written for a non-English audience, you will want to translate some of arkurses’ interface and messages. By virtue of the animations, sometimes arkurses seems to drop a ball on your paddle end, but count it as a miss (sort of like robohack did).

And this is another game where your cursor repeat delay is going to drive you mad. Odd, that never was an issue in alienwave. …

But arkurses works as a rendition of the original 1986 game — not quite pixel-perfect of course, but the best that might be expected given the tools available. Enjoy with my blessing. 😉