Poing

A variation on the basic Breakout theme of having a bat at one end of the screen, using it to direct a ball into hitting each of a grid of blocks. In this adaptation the game is unusually played from left to right. Your task is not to eliminate every block, but to gain access to the back wall, by removing the blocks in front of it, and hit it 10 times, at which point you can go through it onto the next screen.

Sets of 8 screens are grouped together, and when you lose the ball on that level you get hurtled back through the previous ones (an idea seemingly taken from the MSX game Break In) at high speed. If you manage to catch the ball on one of them, you can continue from that level, trying to force the ball back through the end of the level, and get back to where you were.

On each level, the value of the different colours of blocks varies - the points schedule is listed a the side of the screen. Some blocks score onto your bonus rather than directly, others require multiple hits to be removed, and most sets of blocks will regenerate once all are removed - which gives you a chance to increase your score, and also adds points to your bonus.

The levels also contain a variety of bonus bricks, which are revealed as you remove the blocks on top of them and must be hit again to activate. These include bonus multipliers, extra balls, transformations to the ball's physics, and extra lives. There are 5 skill levels, and 2 players can play alternately.