A classic (classic? Who am I trying to kid?) coin-op arcade game from 1993, generated by a company calling themselves Jaleco, this is. It was one of those late 80s/early 90s efforts that was rushed out the door by putting gratuitous nudity in a standard arcade game. A bit like Miss World '96 Nude did with Qix, so this does with Breakout. Though thankfully, without the turning pictures. I would probably die of shock if a stolen still from a slasher film screamed at me when I missed the ball amid a tinny rendition of "Let's All Chant" by the Michael Zager Band. GGGNNNNGGGGHH! "YO' BODY, MAH BODY, EVERYBODY MOVE YO' BODY!" Though it would motivate people to play better I suppose.
Well, basically, it's bouncing a ball with a paddle at bricks until they break. At the start, you're given a choice of model. There's 14 folks in total, 10 female and 4 male. As you break bricks you see segments of the picture revealed and unrevealed and when you do clear it, you get a picture of your chosen person in increasing states of undress. Given that this is in wonderful VGA-standard legovision, they're thankfully hand drawn as opposed to photographed. And drawn fairly well, although sometimes the faces go a bit wonky. Most of the models are fairly standard late 80s/early 90s glamour model type stuff (think Samantha Fox), however, my personal favourite is Daniel. He's a ripe slab of 1970s beefcake with an epic porno 'stache and a purple thong. Ohh yeah. However it's all a bit tasteful. There's no genitalia, more's the pity. But there are boobehs. Which I suppose is a good thing really.
But what's it like to play? Hmmm. Not great, I'm afraid. I suspect they spent most of their budget on the drawings of sexy people with their kit off and not as much on making it play nicely. The paddle can't move all that fast and the ball tends to bounce increasingly horizontally. It's also extremely difficult to aim with the paddle as no change of direction is imparted unless you hit the ball with the outside of said paddle, upon where it simply backtracks. There's the usual array of powerups that fall from the bricks and can be caught with the bat, and none of them stack, which is annoying. There's one which enlarges your paddle, another which makes it all sticky, another which makes it shoot, another which slows things down and lets you last longer, another which highlights the sweet spots. Yeah, nothing new there. There's also some bricks which require multiple hits to clear and some other bricks which are indestructible. The ball also has a habit of accelerating way too much on each bounce, and some later stages have entire rows of indestructible bricks which render it a case of total luck to see if you can clear even a single normal brick. Thankfully I had MAME so it was just a case of hammering the 5 key to virtually put additional coins into it, but in a real machine I'd be very annoyed rather.
And I suppose that's all I can say about this really. Oh yes - there's a DIP switch which can turn off the men or even remove the nudity entirely, in which case you've got an inferior Breakout clone.
(IN1312)