Alleyway

Overview

Alleyway is a block-breaking ball-and-paddle game published by Nintendo for the Game Boy in Japan on April 21, 1989, on North America on August 1989, and in Europe on September 1990.

One of the four original launch titles for the handheld platform in Japan, the others being Baseball, Super Mario Land, and Yakuman, Alleyway plays similarly to Atari's 1976 game Breakout and has players guiding a paddle along the the bottom of the screen, attempting to bounce a ball upwards towards a group of blocks.

Unlike some other Breakout clones at the time, such as Arkanoid, Alleyway keeps a simpler approach without the use of power-ups or enemies. It features a grouped 24-stage system, where the same block pattern is used for three consecutive stages (with the second stage scrolling the pattern horizontally and the third stage advancing the pattern downward) followed by a time-limited bonus stage using sprite designs from Super Mario Bros. It also features a multi-speed system (where holding the A button speeds up the paddle and holding the B button slows it down) and includes Mario as a cameo (who pilots the paddle as a ship).

The game was later re-released in Japan on August 1, 2000 as part of the Nintendo Power cart-writing service. It later received a digital release for both the Nintendo 3DS (as a Virtual Console title in 2011) and Nintendo Switch (on May 14, 2024 as part of the original platform's Nintendo Switch Online service).

The developer of the game is not known with 100% certainty as the game is credited to both Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems Co., Ltd.; the latter claiming credit for the game on their corporate website without delving into any further details.

Gameplay

Similar to other Breakout clones, players control a paddle at the bottom of the screen (using Left and Right on the D-Pad) with the aim of hitting a group of blocks towards the top of the screen with a bouncing ball. Players can control the speed of the paddle by holding either the A button (to speed it up) or the B button (to slow it down) and can influence the ball's direction based on where they hit it. When the ball hits the ceiling of the playfield, the paddle becomes shorter. Hitting gray or black blocks score additional points (double for gray and triple for black) while speeding up the ball.

The objective of each stage is to clear all blocks on the playfield. There are eight sets of stages, each of which have three separate stages (using the same block pattern) followed by bonus stage (with their own patterns) for a total of 24 stages (32 if counting the bonus stages). Each set of stages follow the same pattern:

• Normal Block Screen - Pattern does not move.
• Scrolling Block Screen - Some rows in the pattern move left-to-right, others move right-to-left, all of which wrap around the screen.
• Advancing Block Screen - Pattern advances downward in certain intervals. When blocks reach a certain row, they disappear.
• Bonus Stage - Players have 95 seconds to clear the stage, earning a large amount of bonus points if they're successful. To make it easier, balls do not bounce off of blocks. Failing to do so, or having their ball fall off the screen, continues to the next stage (without losing a life).