Summary
What do you expect from a technology demo?
The Good
William Reider liked to push graphics hardware, and it shows in some of his earlier arcade-to-pc conversions like
Operation Wolf, which supported a VGA-like color palette on certain EGA cards that permitted register tweaking. Bananoid is no exception; Bill had figured out, along with many other VGA tinkerers at the time, that you could unchain VGA video memory and access it in a planar fashion, leading to multiple video pages and oversize video pages (or both at the same time).
Bananoid is, as stated in the readme file that comes with it, a technology demo. Bill wanted to see what unchained VGA could do, and he released his efforts. Based on that, the graphics are a great first effort, both in terms of appearance and speed.
The Bad
Bananoid is just a technology demo. So, as you can guess, gameplay is a bit lacking. Ball reflection angles are fixed at 45 degree angles, so you can play the same screen for 15 minutes trying to hit that one last block. And it's only 7 levels, which is short.
The Bottom Line
As a demo, its great. As a game, it stinks. Pretty cut and dry, I'd say! :-)
