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I have a question which I'm not sure is a good fit for this site (searching around, I'm not finding a lot of similar questions here); before asking it, I wanted to run it by meta.

EDIT: embarrassingly, my friend just now found the game in question for m - it's super dx-ball - but I'd still like to know whether this question would have been a good fit here.

I'm trying to track down a PC game I played and enjoyed many years ago. It was an arkanoid-style game (= breaking bricks with a ball bounced off of a paddle the player controls). I remember the following features:

  • Like arkanoid it had powerups: sometimes, when a brick was broken a powerup would be generated and fall towards the "ground" (to ideally be caught by the paddle).

  • Some powerups were actively negative (e.g. "shrink paddle" and "instant death").

  • Powerups were pictures as opposed to letters (e.g. the arkanoid powerup "L" which gave the paddle lasers corresponded in this game to a picture of a paddle firing lasers).

  • Unlike arkanoid, there were no "monsters" that would fall in from the top of the screen - just bricks, balls, and the paddle.

  • Some of the powerups included: 3x-ball multiplier, 9x-ball multiplier, "comet" (or "fireball"?) ball which would explode adjacent bricks to the one struck, and "slicer" (or ???) which would destroy bricks and pass straight through them. Also, powerups could stack (e.g. you could have a long paddle shooting lasers, or a comet-&-slicer ball).

  • If there was a single brick left in a level and play continued for long enough, a bolt of lightning would strike the remaining brick and the player would move on to the next level.

I really enjoyed this game way back when, and given the specificity of my memory I don't think I'm imagining it. But I haven't been able to find it myself.

What was/is this game called? Can it still be played?

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  • Do you have a screenshot? Game identification questions aren't on topic without a screenshot or other media.
    – Roddy of the Frozen Peas
    Apr 27, 2021 at 17:13
  • @RoddyoftheFrozenPeas No, I don't. Thanks, that answers my question - could you post that as an answer so I can accept it?
    – Noah Schweber
    Apr 27, 2021 at 17:14
  • I'm curious why this got a downvote; I would have thought that asking about appropriateness on meta before asking on main is a good thing.
    – Noah Schweber
    Apr 27, 2021 at 17:16
  • Our friendly neighborhood meta troll downvotes every question and answer on meta. Just ignore it.
    – Roddy of the Frozen Peas
    Apr 27, 2021 at 17:27
  • Votes on meta are a little more ambiguous. In addition to Question quality, sometimes votes here can be used as (dis)agreement with the proposal. In this case, perhaps, indicating that the proposed question would not be suitable.
    – Trent Hawkins
    Apr 27, 2021 at 19:58

1 Answer 1

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We do welcome game identification questions here on Meta. However, we do have strict requirements -- namely that every such question have some form of media as part of it. (Media includes, but is not limited to, screenshots, gifs, video clips, audio clips, and so on.)

If you refer to our Help Center's "What topics can I ask about here?" guidelines:

Please note, however, that site policies prohibit questions of the following types:

[...]

  • Requests for game identification based on personal recollection alone. Read here for more information on the close reason, and read here for some helpful tips on how to identify a game when we can't help.

That blurb links to a useful Meta Q&A -- "What are the requirements for asking a game identification question?" -- which outlines specifically the requirements for these types of questions. The second link is to the tag guidance for the "game identification" tag, which outlines the necessary information for getting the question answered successfully.

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