Arkanoid - Memories

Anyone who knows Taito's Arkanoid also knows that Atari created a very early coin-op called 'Breakout' which preceded 'Arkanoid' by some 11 years in the arcades. When Taito launched 'Arkanoid' in 1987, Atari went to court claiming that 'Arkanoid' was a little too similar to 'Break Out'.

Programmer Jake Simpson had written his own 'Arkanoid' conversion adhoc, and showed it to Lynnsoft who he had worked for in the past. Lynnsoft in turn showed it to Firebird, and Firebird approached Atari for the rights to publish the home computer versions of 'Arkanoid' on the assumption that Atari were going to win the court case. They didn't, and Ocean grabbed the official license via Taito and so the Firebird version was doomed.

Thanks to Frank Gasking's brilliant Games That Weren't 64 web site for uncovering this 'lost' Firebird game, as nobody I've spoken to who worked at Firebird remember anything about this version (including me)! You can also download a version of the C64 game from Frank's site.