Power-Up #11: Light Blue Capsule (Arkanoid)

Some call it a rip-off, but I choose to think of Arkanoid as the Breakout sequel Atari never made. The idea is the same; players juggle a bouncing call while clearing colored tiles. But this Taito classic ups the ante by including power-ups and devious enemies. But not all power-ups are worth collecting. See for yourself in this video we prepared.



Purpose: Not to be confused with the dark blue capsule (which increases the size of your ship), the light blue capsule splits your ball into three. While this may initially seem like a good thing, you'll quickly discover that it's impossible to keep track of all three balls at the same time. This shakes you out of any rhythm you had and leads to a lot of cheap deaths. Pinball players know what I'm talking about.

Legacy: The multi-ball isn't about to disappear. Not only has it been featured in Taito's various Arkanoid sequels, but a brand new generation of pinball fans are learning about this dreaded "power-up" thanks to a myriad of downloadable titles (Pinball Arcade, Zen Pinball 2, Pinball FX 2, etc.). Love it or hate it, the light blue capsule certainly makes things interesting.

In Real Life: Forget trying to bounce these balls around the screen, most people find juggling everyday responsibilities to be next to impossible. That certainly happened to me in the past week. Right in the middle of completing another week's worth of 29 Questionable Power-Up episodes, my computer died on me. Thankfully I was able to get it up and running again, but not before becoming woefully behind on daily installments, reviews and real world obligations. I dropped the balls. The moral of the story is that I am really terrible at juggling a broken computer.