Title: Pomping World in
Japan,
Buster Bros in
America,
Pang in the
UK
Developer:
Mitchell
Publisher:
Mitchell
Year:
1989
Platforms:
Arcade,
Game Boy,
Amstrad GX4000,
Commodore 64,
Commodore Amiga,
Sinclair ZX Spectrum,
Amstrad CPC+,
Atari ST,
Nokia 7650
Genre:
Arcade
Players: One or two player modes
Pomping World started out as an arcade machine and has since been ported over to numerous consoles and home computers (and a mobile phone), and spawned a number of sequels with different gameplay modes (similar to the difference between Gameboy Tetris's mode A and mode B) and improved graphics.
The gameplay works like this: a big ball falls from the top of the screen. Shooting it splits it up into two medium sized balls. Shooting those turns them into small balls, and shooting those turns them into tiny balls. Shooting tiny balls makes them disappear. If you touch a ball, you die. It's reasonably similar to Asteroids, only with gravity and objects bouncing off of the floor and walls.
There are various power-ups including an array of weapons, the ability to pause the balls and a shield to protect you.
The original arcade machine uses a Z80 running at 8MHz as the CPU. Be warned, it is equipped with a suicide chip.