Nowadays, this is signaled as one of the first commercial "clones" in videogame history, as we understand them today, and serves as a fascinating glimpse into the artistic impulses that propelled early developers that attempted to outbeat a hit title in their own space (previously I said that game was Breakout, which was obviously wrong. The game that they were drawing inspiration from was obviously Pong). With that being said, the notion of "clone" itself entails a series of assumptions that one can't easily apply to this particular period so easily, and if anything, it's more of a testament to the fact that we are willing to categorize the past of the medium with modern, largely broad strokes. What I can say regarding Clean Sweep in particular, I think it's apparent that the impulse here orbited around filling the screen with more stuff to do, which doesn't stray too far away from the way in which we tend to distinguish original works from copy-cats today. It's usually not a fair optic, but it's also the way in which much gaming media operates, which is a problem when trying to discern what makes a particular work significant. Unfortunately, with this game in particular in particular I don't think there's that much value to extract from, as it gets boring pretty quickly.

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A día de hoy, este juego se trata como uno de los primeros "clones" comerciales en la historia de los videojuegos, tal como se entienden hoy, y sirve como muestra del tipo de impulsos artísticos que impulsaban a desarrolladores a superar un título exitoso (antes dije que era Breakout, cuando obviamente se trataba de Pong). Dicho esto, la noción de "clon" en sí implica una serie de suposiciones que uno no puede aplicar tan fácilmente a este período, y en todo caso, es más una muestra de nuestra tendencia a categorizarlo todo con brocha gorda y adecuada a nuestras sensibilidades modernas. Lo que puedo decir de Clean Sweep en particular es que, a la hora de construir su espacio de juego, parece creer que la clave es llenar la pantalla con más cosas, lo que pensándolo bien es el tipo de elemento que mucha gente emplea para distinguir un original de la copia barata. Es una mirada que puede ser muy injusta y que en ocasiones nos impide observar los detalles particulares que hacen a una obra única. Desafortunadamente, con este juego se hace difícil extraer algo de valor, porque se hace aburrido muy deprisa.