Wallbanger

Wallbanger dates from February 1982, which makes it a relic of the IBM PC's absolute prehistory — the machine itself had been on sale for barely half a year, and its game library amounted to a handful of titles. Anyone wanting to play on a several-thousand-dollar office computer chose between a few text games and a few attempts to squeeze proven arcade concepts onto a CGA screen. Wallbanger belongs to the latter camp: it is an unapologetic Breakout clone.

The rules take one breath to explain. A paddle at the bottom, three rows of bricks at the top, three balls in reserve. You bat the ball upward and chip away at the wall; where the ball meets the paddle nudges its course, and that is the only instrument of finesse you get. Let all three balls fall through and the game is over. Actually demolish the wall to the last brick and the game crowns you with the honorary title of „Wallbanger“ — and that is the whole show: there is no second level waiting, and the score resets.

Judging such a thing by modern standards is beside the point. It adds nothing to arcade Breakout, then already six years old, and even for 1982 it is a modest afternoon's work. But this is exactly what PC gaming looked like at a moment when nobody suspected the accounting machine would one day become the biggest gaming platform in the world. As a core sample from that moment, Wallbanger speaks clearly: primitive, functional, unambitious — and yet somebody played it and kept it, which is why it survives at all.

It has earned its five minutes: it runs on oldgame.cz straight in your browser, exactly as squarely as it ran on the very first PCs in 1982.