Vaus

Vaus is the main protagonist of Taito's Arkanoid video game series. As this playable character is controlled by a player, it is a space vessel with a male pilot from the mothership of humanity known as Arkanoid.

Play
This space vessel acts like a paddle from Atari's video game of the 1970s titled Breakout to prevent the ball from falling outside the playing field of DOH's dimension and attempt to bounce it and let it strike the bricks (except the unbreakable golden bricks) until they are all gone in order to go to the next dimensional level, where another pattern of bricks appears. There are a number of variations (bricks that have to be hit multiple times, flying enemy ships, etc.) and important power-up capsules to enhance the abilities of Vaus, but the gameplay remains the same.

Arkanoid
In the first installment of the series, the evil cosmic entity known as DOH raids the mothership Arkanoid, which is traveling the space in search of planets suitable for colonization. This results Vaus being scrambled from it and warped to another dimension. Vaus is then forced to fight it's way through this dimension, eventually facing DOH in the final battle. At round 33 (round 36 in the NES version). Vaus will take "DOH" appearing as a robotic head resembling Moai statue. Once it reaches round 33, DOH must be defeated with the remaining extra lives because there are no continues on the final round. In the NES version the final boss is on stage 36, and there are no continues throughout the entire game, so the entire game must be beaten in one sitting. After DOH's defeat, time starts flowing reversely allowing Vaus to escape the distorted dimension and return home.

Arkanoid: Revenge of DOH
When DOH revived to take over the spaceship called Xorg and invade our universe from another dimension for its vengeance following its previous defeat, the Arkanoid-type spaceship Mixtec decides to launch a preemptive attack, sending the Vaus 2 spacecraft to invade Xorg. DOH is once again defeated along with Xorg.

Arkanoid: Doh It Again
10 years after the final battle with DOH, Arkanoid continues it's search for inhabitable planets with no success. Suddenly, Arkanoid's sensors pick up the signal of Terra-class planet, so Vaus is sent to the planet to conduct surveillance. The planet, however, is being used by DOH as a bait to lure Vaus, which has to confront the space entity once again.

In the bad ending (acquired after beating rounds 33 or 66), Vaus returns to Arkanoid empty-handed after learning the planet was a fake created by DOH and Arkanoid is forced to continue it's search. In the good ending (acquired after beating round 99), Vaus finally reaches the planet's surface after defeating DOH, who is declared to be gone forever, putting an end to Arkanoid's long search.

Arkanoid Returns
DOH still did not get the message and after many years of silence decides to have revenge against Arkanoid despite its previous defeats. Vaus better be ready to face new, yet familiar galactic challenges, in order to defeat DOH once and for all.