Prism Land

Prism Land is a bat and ball type of game that started with Breakout in the late 70’s and in classics games like Arkanoid.

In Prism Land you play as Prism and Rhythm (a cat and a fairy) who set out to save the seven trapped guardians of the land in a game very similar in gameplay to Breakout. You play through the stages with the cat holding a magic paddle at the bottom of the screen bouncing a ball across the screen to break all the pieces set up on the stage.

There are 6 worlds (forest, sea, cloud etc.); each of which have 9 levels plus a boss level. You may play the worlds in any order you like except for the last world (the castle world) which is available when all the others are complete. You select which world to play from a game map.

There are icons that have a similar effect to the ones on Arkanoid – they may increase or decrease the size of your bat or speed of the ball for example. But there are a lot of these icons – far more than in Arkanoid; some are really wacky. For instance – one inflates the ball to a enormous size; almost taking up the whole screen. Other examples are steerable balls, exploding balls and an Arkanoid-like shield which appears behind your bat (the difference here is that it grows stronger with each shield icon collected and weakens if a ball hits it).

The real innovation is linked to what the game calls combos. A combo is basically the number of bricks destroyed by the ball before you have to deflect it again. The ball get faster the higher your combo gets. Combos get you points but they also give you magic points. At the start of each level you can ‘buy’ power-ups before beginning play. These power-ups are the same as the icon power-ups. This introduces a bit of strategy into the game.

There is also a 2 player split screen battle mode.