Pang, also called Buster Bros on some consoles in NA, is a lesser-known arcade game loosely based on Asteroids: shoot large things (balloons) to break them into littler ones until you clear them all.



Though the Pang arcade game never became very well known, this particular port for the Amiga is very close to arcade perfection and represents the graphics and music absolutely beautifully.



Players control cutesy Japanese male characters in safari gear that use various weapons that shoot upwards to destroy the balloons. As stages are cleared, players travel through 50 levels across 17 different geographical locations around the world. These locations create beautiful backdrops behind the frantic and addictive old-school arcade action. The different locations are both a mental bridge to track one’s progress as well as a visual reward. The graphics really are a lot of fun, and the music is awesome.





As balloons are popped, various power-ups drop down that can create faster shooting guns, freeze the balloons from falling for a short time, add playing time, create shields, and create grappling hooks that attach to the ceiling. Some of the levels put obstacles in the sky - some which can be destroyed, and others that can’t.



Users can decide to play a two-player simultaneous mode in a cooperative fashion. However, during this mode any time a player dies it stops all of the action for both players and the level restarts, which can be annoying.



All-in-all Pang is a lot of fun to play and highly addicting.



Notes about playing on classic hardware:



As with many arcade ports on the Amiga platform, many early (pre-1991) games just don’t work well on any machine other than a 500. Note the two ADF versions below as a result of this sadly common issue. If the ADF for 500s is played on AGA hardware, graphical glitches will explode like fireworks all over the place.



Also, it appears this game was originally created for PAL and plays beautifully in this mode. Therefore, if you can boot into PAL mode, we recommend doing so (especially with the AGA ADF below). This is one of the few PAL action games that will go full-screen and animate gorgeously with no detrimental slowdown for the most part.

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