Performan

Gameplay screenshot.

Performan is an action game reminiscent of Dig Dug in which the players control the on-screen protagonist from a top-down perspective, where the main objective on each screen is to eliminate enemies in order to progress further, while an intermission animation plays between some stages.[5][6] Getting hit by an enemy will result in losing a live and once all lives are lost, the game is over unless the players insert more credits into the arcade machine to continue playing.

The player controls the robot with a four-way joystick and two buttons to attack and dig. Players can dive into the ground to avoid enemies that can also perform the same action to chase the player character.[5][6] Players can also attack enemies by throwing boomerangs, which can trigger the "meca-stones" placed on the playfield to explode and eliminating any enemy caught within its blast radius.[5][6] Players can also trigger the meca-stones under the ground to eliminate enemies as well. Eliminating many enemies at once with an exploding meca-stone grants a determined number of points, which is also crucial for reaching high scores, though players can be paralyzed if the robot is caught with its blast radius. Meca-stones can also be pushed against enemies.[5]

After exploding a meca-stone, a gift item is spawned and after picking up the last gift before completing a stage, a "P" icon appears at the center of the playfield that turns into a colored ball.[5] Collecting four colored balls in a row grants an extra live.[5] After blowing up a meca-stone with enemies nearby, a ghost appears and after catching it, turns the players invincible for a brief time period to defeat enemies.[5][6]

Performan was created by most of the same team that previously worked on several projects at Orca and Crux before both companies declared bankruptcy in 1984, after which a group of employees from the two gaming divisions would go on to form Toaplan and among them were composers Masahiro Yuge and Tatsuya Uemura, both of which recounted the project's development process and history between 1990 and 2012 through Japanese publications such as Gamest and Shooting Gameside.[7][8][9][10][11][12] Both Yuge and Uemura stated that the game was designed by Kenichi Takano and that their development environment at the time of the title's creation was done in the bedroom of an apartment.[7][8][9] Uemura worked on the sound design for the game while he still formed part of Crux developing Repulse, however Yuge later assumed the sound design duties after Uemura had a motorcycle accident during development, in addition to programming as well.[7][9][10][11][12]

Performan was released only in arcades across Japan by Data East on April 1985.[3][5] The game ran on a proprietary arcade board manufactured by Toaplan, which used two Zilog Z80 as well as two General Instrument AY-3-8910 chips for sound, while its visuals were rendered at 240 x 264 pixels with 256 colors and displayed 512 sprites on-screen.[2][3][13] The hardware board for the title would be later reused with other titles from the company such as Tiger-Heli, Guardian and Slap Fight.[13] Uemura stated that the reason why the company was not credited for the title was due to contractual arrangements with Data East.[10][11]

In Japan, Game Machine listed it on their June 1, 1985 issue as being the 20th most-successful table arcade unit of the year, outperforming titles such as Kung-Fu Master and Xevious.[14] Nick Zverloff of Hardcore Gaming 101 gave positive remarks to Performan in regards to the graphics, music and gameplay but criticized several aspects.[6] Den of Geek noted it to be a "fairly low-key" title from Toaplan.[15][16]

• Performan at GameFAQs
• Performan at Killer List of Videogames
• Performan at The Toaplan Museum