"..what about Jimmy Lightning?" he asks, "even if he does say things like 'TUBULAR!'"

Peggle has inspired more conversations amongst friends than any other triple A title in the last 12 months. A phone vibrates and informs of challenge progress, a scoring tip or a damning report of just how rubbish Claude the fucking lobster really is. PopCap have melded the casual and the hardcore with such startling precision that it seems almost silly for other developers to continue to bother.

Like previous runaway successes Bejewled or Zuma, Peggle demands no prior knowledge from a first time player outside of a base understanding of gravity: the ball fired will travel downwards; its course altered by obstacles. Here, player as tabula rasa can fully understand the goal of the game as soon as the A button is struck, and by the time the first ball bearing whizzes past its y-axis boundary, a player, pad in hand will have witnessed the game’s physics and defining mechanic in full swing whilst simultaneously absorbing the dials and whistles built into its colourful screen furniture. In realisation that filling the fever bar by striking orange pegs is each level’s narrative goal, one can joyfully bumble through the game’s adventure mode with varying degrees of success, gormlessly happy.

It's the game's humble beginnings in chance that give it such an open door policy to play; the lure of the ball's motion, bounce and potential for coin-pusher bucket-catch fireworks enough to entice non-gamers and road-mapped eye obsessives alike into a rapturous chorus of ‘Ode to Joy’ each and every time the ball ducks into one of three incrementally scored winning pots.

In this curious combination of Arkanoid, Pachinko and Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker, Peggle Deluxe asks little more than for players to bounce a ball off some pegs. Like a fairground game of skill, accessibility is immediate, with clapped eyes latching onto throwaway formula like 'DART into CARD equals PRIZE' or 'BALL into SKITTLE equals WIN’ and applying it wholesale to these glimmering, bumpered shapes. And yet Peggle is something that you get better at, subtly introducing multipliers and bonuses in a way which at no point overcomplicates itself, instead ascending at a perfect incline: a golden ratio.

It's about learning the bounce plain and simple, with options like character's special abilities a relative technicality. Mastery comes only with full and constant comprehension of the strafing bucket and careful manipulation of the fever bar; a thoughtful game combining a keen attention to both in order to boost score and prolong play. What once would have been taken as a carefree shot tempered with fingers crossed expands to multi-bounce plans and tactical skims, fist pumped in response to another one of Jimmy’s lightning licks and buck-teethed exclamations.

As the games main addition in its transition to Xbox Live, multiplayer is functional and enjoyable, though hardly deserving of superlative titling like deluxe. Shot timers, while largely essential in keeping sets of 10 balls moving at a relative clip (made moot by Live terrorists wedging balls in crustacean catch while cackling down their headset), often reduce rounds to quick fire luck - a derisory point when playing with friends, but a problem for any genuinely gunning for leaderboard recognition. While it encourages a player to learn a new way of playing, Peggle was always intended as a title reclined, leaving seat-edge-twitch to other bigger hitters.

In presentation, Peggle is bright and airy. Its audio, despite being made up of what seems like a handful of 15 second loops seldom grates despite repeated play and its incidentals are tied indelibly and satisfyingly to shot success. With eyes closed the game fizzes with character and summer life with everything from the title screen onwards screaming ‘Symphonic’ like old LPs priced with post-its at a boot sale. Colours snap like the Wizard of Oz and whether returning to play or meeting the bubble print logo anew, the birds transposed against the sunset whisper “dip your toe in, the water’s lovely.”

Peggle promises to drag you out of any seasonal affective disorder, wrap the year following in Bjorn’s equine grin and wake you up with faux sunlight next time the clocks change. Seldom do 800 points give so much.

(9/10)