The Sites and Sounds of "Super Pang" Quiz

Answer: Hong Kong

Hong Kong is the only setting in the game that has only a single stage associated with it. All other locations are played for two or three stages. Three-stage locations are seen at day, sunset and night; two-stage locations are shown at whichever two of these three the developers preferred. The designers' image of Hong Kong is mostly an assortment of neon signs, by the way.

Answer: Silk Road

The Silk Road stages are the first ones to feature ladders for the player's character to climb and also hide the first extra life available from breaking blocks (it is available on the sunset stage of this set, in the topmost block of the third column from the edge - either left or right, whichever one is shot first).

Answer: Himarayas

The Himalaya setting is a view from one of the higher peaks, but it does not actually show the place the shot is taken from. It shows several ranges of mountains emerging from the clouds. It's still a relatively easy set to play without many unexpected balloon bounces.

The first stage of this set can be a bit tricky as a missed shot will likely liberate additional small balloons initially caught between breakable blocks at the top. The set also breaks the typical lighting pattern with the first being a somewhat misty morning setting and the second clear day instead of sunset.

Answer: Castle Neuschwanstein

I hope you didn't miss the extra life available in Istanbul (sunset stage, 4th column from the right) before heading to the quite tricky German stages. All three of these require the player to carefully estimate the bouncing of the balloons - the first because of the bowl-shaped floor, the second because it involves two balloon types with different bounce heights and the third because balloons often bounce back horizontally or diagonally at the low-lying fixed platforms.

Answer: Sunset and night

Venice is one of the short settings in the game with only two times available. There is no daytime image of the city; instead the first stage is immediately the sunset one. As an aside, day stages always have red balloons, sunset stages use blue ones and night stages have green balloons. (The second Himalaya stage has blue balloons as well, since it takes the place of a sunset round).

There are no extra lives here, but the next round, Spain, has one in the first stage - you need to stand on the small platform at the very left and shoot a lone block in the top left corner. Be sure to wait for the item to come down after shooting the block - it falls through and becomes unreachable if you do not catch it while falling!

Answer: Sacré Coeur

The French stages include the infamous "hurry up" stage. You only get to enjoy the daytime view of the Sacré Coeur cathedral against the blue sky for a maximum of 28 seconds until you time out in this frenzied stage featuring a single balloon of the second largest size in the game (which ultimately splits into 8 small ones).

The sunset stage of this set often drops a random extra life on the very first balloon you hit, so do not jump off that platform before you are sure it does not drop (you cannot get back up).

Answer: Zero

When casually looking at the image, it seems that the leftmost of the three pixel groups on the bridge's main span could be a London double decker bus, but comparison with an actual photograph of Tower Bridge clarifies it as being one of the buildings on the bank of the river Thames. Like all of the images, the rendering of the bridge is a very accurate (for an 8-bit picture) representation of the real landmark and like all others, it does not show any human or animal life.

The Tower Bridge stages feature three nasty obstacles - first six captive balloons you cannot shoot but have to get rid of by exploding one of the crocodiles and then the slippery floor and flashing balloons (which split into four instead of two) on the second stage.

Answer: Grassland and mesas

The American stages are all quite hard. In the third Canada stage, there is frequently a randomly dropped extra life, but actually getting it before dying is tough unless you are lucky enough to get a shield early. The Wild West stages show four mesa mountains in some distance (behind grassland) and several of them do feature the polyhedral balloons that do not obey gravity. Shooting the fast-flying red birds is almost vital on these stages since their power-ups are very useful on these six stages.

Answer: Iguazu falls

Unlike most scenes, Brazil is shown by a different icon on the map than in actual play. The map shows what looks like sugarloaf mountain, but the actual backdrop is Iguazu. On the first stage of this scene, there is an extra life hidden in one of the blocks of the "G" letter, but it will drop to the inside of the letter so you have to run up the ladder after shooting and make the jump from above.

This in turn requires an invisible platform beneath the "G" still to be present, so be careful what you shoot in the right half of the screen. Random oddity - the letters made up by the blocks begin as "BANG" and shooting off the breakable blocks leaves "PANC" (you could however read the ladder as an "I" and make "PANIC" out of the completed stage).

Answer: The moon

Consisting of only two stages again, the Caribbean scene is a tropical beach landscape. It has the daytime and sunset views but no night variant. The last bonus item you will encounter during stage 40 actually gives an extra life if walked over, so if you want to maximize your score and are sure of making it without the extra life, you should try to shoot it (in which case it will "downgrade" to the next lower tier, being 200,000 points).