Dinosaur Ball is the Asian equivalent of Pang, created and released by AMWA in Hong Kong. The task of the player (or players, because the authors have made it possible to play with two people) is very simple: with the use of a specific chain firing gun, it has to hit all the balloons on the board, avoiding any physical contact with them at the same time. That’s how it looks in theory, at least. And what is it like in practice?
Balloons are available in three sizes: large, medium and small. The largest ones bounce the strongest and move the slowest, making it easy to avoid contact with them. After being shot down, the large balloons break down into two mediums, which move much faster and are harder to hit. However, if we destroy them as well, we get two more, this time tiny. These balloons are the most difficult to bypass, as the range of the rebound slightly exceeds the height of our hero. From time to time, various bonuses fall out of broken targets. They can slow down the movement of balloons, stop them in place, equip the player with a laser rifle or a fixed ceiling chain.
The game offers fifty stages with increasing difficulty levels. On the board, apart from balloons, there may be various obstacles, e.g. walls that need to be bypassed when climbing a ladder or indestructible shelves. The product, as befits a dexterity game, is quite demanding – apart from a lot of manual skills, the player will have to show a lot of reflexes and the ability to make quick, logical decisions. The audiovisual setting is pretty good, although it is far from the Amiga version of Pang, both in terms of the appearance of the main character and the landscapes in the background (dinosaurs).
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Dinosaur Ball
