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At this rate, there will be as many Arkanoid/Breakout clones as there are karate games!

Two more dropped into the C&VG 16-bit Christmas bag this week: Tonic Tiles and Amigas (Amiga) (ST), both programmed in Europe and licensed by UK companies for domestic consumption.

Tonic Tiles was programmed in France by 'd3M' and is published over here by The Edge. The game is most notable for its amazing graphics and animation. Gameplay is slow to start but picks up in later levels.

Sure, a game should be fast and furious on level one, the ball is coming back at you before you've had a chance to breathe. But Tonic Tiles has 33 levels, the first sixteen of which can be accessed at will. The remaining seventeen will have to be played for! The game also has a screen editor, allowing you to tweak, or completely change any, or all, of the first sixteen levels.

It's a shame that a potential winner has been spoilt by too little attention to playability. Games like Thrust have shown that a good game doesn't have to have show-stopping graphics to be playable, but unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way round.

Amigas was programmed by Golden Games in Germany and is being released over here by Interceptor Micros through their Pandora label. Amigas looks and plays very much like Arkanoid, although there are a number of additional features worthy of note.

First off, the game boasts a brace of entirely convincing bounce and bang sound effects as well as the, by now, obligatory sampled music.

Unlike most games of this ilk, the speed of the ball doesn't gradually increase with the number of impacts. Instead, it is determined by where on the bat it is hit. Thus, if the ball hits the bat dead centre, it will rebound slowly, but will zoom away when hit anywhere near the edges.

Another unique feature in Amigas is the generator block. When one of these is hit, it disappears, only to produce one, or a group of blocks elsewhere which, in turn, may produce still more.

Both Tonic Tiles and Amigas have the standard set of extras, such as splitter, magnetic bat, laser, etc.