Pang: A Forgotten Capcom Video Game Gem

Pang is an example of how great design and slicky-implemented controls can turn the most unlikely concept into a great little video game. In theory, Capcom’s 1989 game doesn’t sound to promising at all: it’s a run-and-gunner where you’re stuck within the confines of a single screen, and the enemies are large, bouncing bubbles. Oh, and its big twist is that, for the most part, you can only shoot directly upwards. Doesn’t sound great, does it?

Except Pang - or Buster Bros, or Pomping World, as it’s variously known - really is great. It’s fast, an enormous amount of fun with a second player, insidiously addictive and, perhaps because it seemed quaint even at the tail end of the 80s, somehow timeless.

Pangeffectively marries the globe-trotting antics of Tecmo’s 1984 coin-op Bomb Jack (itself a superb little game) with the dividing menace concept of Asteroids. In other words, the game involves visiting different locations and shooting bubbles, which will split into smaller bubbles each time they’re hit. The twist is that your little hero (dressed in a safari suit and pith helmet for some reason) is armed with a kind of grappling gun that fires a slow-moving projectile up the screen. In its ordinary, non-powered-up form, only one shot can be fired at a time. If you miss, the projectile slowly wends its way up the screen, leaving you vulnerable for a split second until it vanishes and you can fire again. 

It’s these strictly-defined rules that make Pangso absorbing: you have to adapt to them in order to survive. The slow-firing grappling hook means you have to time each shot carefully, picking just the right moment to make every press of the fire button count. Get the timing wrong, and you’re in constant danger of being crushed by the increasing number of bubbles bouncing around the screen - which happens surprisingly often, even though they’re among the dimmest and most basic threats to grace an 80s video game.

As the bubbles are broken down, so their threat changes. What were initially huge, slow-moving bubbles are swiftly replaced by orbs that are smaller, faster-moving and more numerous. Here again skill and strategy come into play. With practice, it’s possible to time shots so that you’re bursting the smallest bubbles just before they land on your head, eliminating the grappling hook and allowing you to rapidly spool up the next shot - it’s a bit like Space Invaders, where elite gamers could fire shots in quick succession by only shooting at enemies nearest the bottom of the screen.

Naturally, later stages increase the difficulty, with greater numbers of bubbles soon joined by ever more complex networks of platforms and ladders. In some instances, these provide a valuable hiding place from the bouncing onslaught, but they can also prove to be traps, boxing the player in as a bubble closes in from above. 

Power-ups even things out a bit, from double grappling hooks to machine guns to an incredibly useful item that freezes the balloons in their tracks for a few precious seconds. But even power-ups have to be deployed with care. It’s satisfying to spray the screen with the three-way-firing machine gun or shooting at the bubbles while they’re frozen in mid-air, but doing so can also leave the screen littered with dozens of smaller bubbles which are almost impossible to avoid in greater numbers. Again, Pang’s the kind of shooter that requires a modicum of thought as well as quick reflexes.

Pang was directed by Yoshiki Okamoto, a designer responsible for the Konami arcade hits Time Pilot and Gyruss in the early part of the 80s before relocating to Capcom. There, Okamoto created some of that company’s biggest successes, including the shooters Side Arms, Forgotten Worlds, the beat-em-up classic Final Fight, and Street Fighter II. Interestingly, Pang’s concept was pioneered not within Capcom, but at Hudson Soft in the earlier part of the decade. Hudson developed a game called Bubble Busterin 1983 which, like Eric and the Floaters released the same year, was like a cut-down, 8-bit prototype of the later, far more famous game. But where Eric and the Floaters became Hudson’s own Bomber Man series, Bubble Bustermaterialized in greatly improved form courtesy of a rival company. 

Pang’s success in arcades was such that it was soon ported to all kinds of home platforms - including the ZX Spectrum, which played host to Bubble Buster. What was refreshing about Pang was that it was a simple enough concept to get up and running on even the most aged systems. While the Super Nintendo version was colorful and slick, the monochrome Spectrum port was still an enormous amount of fun, and even managed to squeeze in the two-player co-op mode.

Pang also spawned a string of sequels: 1990's Super Pang, Pang 3 (also known as Buster Buddies), Mighty! Pang (2000) and the curiously titled Pang: Magical Michael for the Nintendo DS in 2010 (which, despite its name, has far fewer male strippers in it than you might expect).

Pang is therefore one of those quirky titles that, like its deadly, world-invading bubbles, bounces in and out of the video gaming landscape. It’s never quite gone away, but neither has it created the same impact of the biggest games that emerged from the 80s arcade scene. And yet, even today, it remains a taut, charming game. Its simple mechanics and strict rules set it apart from the increasingly frenzied shooters emerging in the late 80s. A quarter of a century on, Pang remains as addictive as popping a roll of bubble wrap.