This is in fact an excellent Breakout clone, rotated on its side. In this one, your vertical bat moves up and down the side of the screen, instead the more usual configuration of moving a horizontal bat along the bottom.
I only award it four points instead of five though, because the speccy version whilst pretty good, is truthfully not quite as good as the C64 version. The additions in the C64 version of in-game music and scrolling background layers really do enhance the game and the in-game sprites truthfully look better on that system too. There's also a couple of rare bugs in the speccy version where the ball can get trapped indefinitely, overlapping the edge of a brick and another one where the ball can get stuck in an infinite loop. Other ports don't seem to suffer from this occasional problem. I'm happy to say though that generally, the playabitity of the game is just as good on the speccy as on other platforms.
The ball is pleasingly large and although you start off with a tiny bat, the "bat extension" power-up should be grabbed ASAP, particularly on level one. There are a good variety of power-ups and "enemy" sprites. These include floating faces, and wasps that paralyse your bat.
Each level has a different layout and acts as an incentive to keep playing. It always feels compelling to see what the next one looks like. The dual-speed bat mechanism is also a good idea as is the ability to set both bat and ball speed via an options screen. As you get better at the game, it may be to your advantage to start playing with a faster bat, for example.
So, overall a highly recommended, fun and addictive game. The speccy port is not the very best version though, IMHO.
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