Magic Ball

Game's Main Menu

**Magic Ball**, also known as **Smash Frenzy** is a 3D Arkanoid Breakout-style game made by Dream Dale Entertainement and published by Alawar Entertainment and GameHouse in 2002.

## Description

On each level, the players must destroy 95% of the bricks in-game to make it to the next level. Once the players destroy 95% of the bricks, a "yellow capsule" will appear and the players must get it to warp to the next level. Players, however, can choose to ignore it and keep destroying leftover bricks.

## Features

The camera like the other Smash Frenzy titles can be rotated while you play due to the 3D perspective.

In the settings you can enable old backgrounds which are 2D instead of the default 3D. You can also toggle an option that lets you see the ball even when behind other bricks.

## Prizes

There are many prizes (the game's power-ups) which can help the players like *Rocket Launcher*, which helps players to destroy bricks faster. However, there are power-downs which players must beware of like *Jack the "Bat Killer"* which causes a loss of life when picked up.

## Level Pack And Editions

 Zoo Pack (Could just be Pack 2 or 3)

* Magic Ball: Christmas Edition (December of 2002, United Kingdom)
	+ Magic Ball: Winter Edition (German name for Christmas Edition, released at the same time as above)

## Trivia

* In Germany the game was released on CD as **Magic Ball Deluxe** with another game titled "Beetle Ju Gold".
	+ Also in Germany, the Winter Edition was bundled with "Aqua Bubble II", and "Zokk Blokk Deluxe" on CD.
		- Both of these physical releases have demos for Magic Ball 2, aka Smash Frenzy 2.
* Alawar's game page shows the general rating is 2 out of 5 stars
	+ Despite this, the page says no one has reviewed the game yet
* Latest version is v1.74
* The registration screen (officially known as nag screen by the developer), it says "Register now and get +2 points of karma".
* The remixed Russian National Anthem can be heard on the Main Menu screen. *(insert video of this?)*
* The Save file is found at the same location as the game's exe as "quick.sav"
	+ Every other game in the series on Windows put the save files in "Appdata/Roaming"
* Inside the game's files at the bottom of the Prizes list is one named "nothing". This does not exist outside of this text.
* A level editor is mentioned as one of the options in the text file for the main menu inside of "Engine.exe".
	+ A menu can be found with Resource Hacker as the only entry under "Menu".
	+ Other windows such as "Extended Brick Control" as entry 223 in "Dialog", and "Board size" as entry 5002 also in "Dialog".
* Some leftover source files is inside of "Pack2.dat". No source code files remains in the other archive formats the game uses.
	+ First file is "Script1.rc" which judging by the log was made with Microsoft Developer Studio
	+ A mentioned file "Resource.h" is also in this dat file.

## Gallery

### Screenshots

Title Screen with the "Old Style Backgrounds" option onScr1-smashfrenzy.jpgMain menu for the Level EditorExtended Brick Control dialogBoard Size dialog

## External Links

1. Developers' Game Page
	1. Developers' Order Page which includes two bonus packs for this game
2. German publisher's Game Page
	1. German publisher's list of on disc collections which includes Magic Ball Deluxe with a 2 in 1.
3. Alawar's Game Page
4. Game on GameHouse
5. MobyGames' Game Page
	1. MobyGames' Article of the Christmas Edition

## References

1. ↑ Breakout-Pedia's sub-page which shows the contents of these files.