Remember putting on your Adidas gear, grabbing a roll of quarters, and heading down to the cineplex pizzeria video arcade to play those classic arcade games of yore? Perhaps some of you are too young to remember such an era ("When Estevezes roamed the Earth,..."), but now everyone can relive those golden days with Nitrome's Rainbogeddon, a retro-riffic, Pacman-esque quarter-grabber updated for the twenty-first century.

Gameplay is simple: Use the [arrow] keys to move your white, blobby protagonist and collect all the dots in each labyrinthian level, just like a certain yellow gaming hero you might be familiar with. Collect and upgrade various power-ups littered about the maze, then deploy them with the [spacebar]. Powerups range from bombs and bullets to shoot enemies and walls, to teleporters and drills to navigate through the more twisty levels. Yes, it's Pacman + power-ups, and it changes the basic gameplay in dynamic and inventive ways. Because the levels are destructible, the mazes more difficult to traverse, and the enemies smarter and more varied, Rainbogeddon is a surprisingly strategic twist on a familiar classic. Arguably there are too many power-ups, and it can take a while to figure out how levels, enemies, and power-ups interact, but once it all clicks, beating a level can be very satisfying. Mix in a beat-heavy synth score and Lite-Brite-colored graphics, and you've got a fine modern take on vintage arcade gaming. And you don't even need to feed the machine a quarter to continue.

Play Rainbogeddon