Super Pang

Back in the day, when people used to go to arcade places to enjoy a nice evening of playing video games, some titles noticeably had much longer lines than others. Some games just seemed to draw a lot of people to even witness what the current player was achieving, or the high scores he's getting. People waiting for the screen to display that Game Over message so that the next in line could get their turn. One of these popular machines was Super Pang. This game was also released on consoles, so let's see what this title is all about!

About the game

This game was released originally for arcade machines, and this means that there's really no need to have a complex story or character development, or anything like that. So we have to take that into consideration. After putting money into the machine (or pressing the button that simulates this effect), we will choose the number of players, which can be 1 or 2 (who will play simultaneously), and then we only have to choose the game mode.

The way to play is simple. With the direction buttons, our character moves to the sides, goes up or down the stairs and, with the action button, we shoot a harpoon that travels from the position of our character vertically until it reaches an enemy or the ceiling.

The enemies are composed of balls of different sizes. When a ball is hit it splits into two smaller ones, and this happens again and again until the ball has the smallest possible size, in which case when you shoot it the ball will disappear. Another enemy that appears with less repetition is hexagons that are not affected by gravity and simply bounce around the screen at will.

The two game modes are Tour and Panic to choose from, we've talked a little about the panic mode, but let's get a bit deeper into the Tour mode. In this mode, we will travel the world through a handful of tracks, each one special and unique in its own way. Some of the platforms that we can see can be destroyed, just shoot them to make them disappear, and sometimes they can give us some special bonuses, such as some special weapons.

Among these weapons we will have the double shot, that is to say, to shoot up to 2 harpoons simultaneously, or the anchor harpoon, which will be hooked to the ceiling where we shoot, or other objects that will give us a variety of skills.

An arcade monster

The reason that this game used to drag so many people to gather around the arcade machine is that the game is really fun and challenging, yet it can be enjoyed in short periods. Kinda like a pinball machine, or a Street Fighter arcade. You can keep playing as long as you keep winning, if you're good enough you'd be hooked there for hours even. And there's the added advantage of being able to get your name on the top of the scoreboard.

Pros:

• Solid gameplay
• Fun
• Challenging

Cons:

• It gets boring after a while
• Not much content