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For other uses, see Breakout (disambiguation).

Breakout
Developer	Atari Games
Publisher	Atari Games
Designer	Nolan Bushnell
Release date	1976
Genre	Arcade
Modes	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Cabinet	Standard and cocktail
Arcade system
CPU(s)	{{{cpu}}}
Sound chip(s)	{{{sound}}}
Video resolution	{{{resolution}}}
Monitor	Horizontal orientation, Raster, medium resolution
Input	Rotary controller; 1 button
Ports
Notes	{{{notes}}}

Breakout is a Pong-like arcade game introduced by Atari in 1976, with a follow-up, Super Breakout, appearing in 1978.

In the game, a layer of 'bricks' lines the top third of the screen. A ball travels across the screen, 'bouncing' off the top and side walls of the screen. When the ball hits a brick, the ball bounces off and the brick disappears. The player loses a life when the ball touches the bottom of the screen, and to prevent this from happening, the player has a movable paddle that the ball can bounce off.

Breakout used a black and white monitor. However, the top part of the monitor had tinted strips of transparent material placed over it so that the bricks appeared to be in color.

This amazingly simple yet addictive game is the basis of countless remakes, including Atari's own Super Breakout and Taito's Arkanoid.

Development

Breakout, a discrete logic (non-microprocessor) game, was developed by Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, while he was employed by Hewlett-Packard.

Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs worked at Atari, and he enlisted Wozniak to design the game, which he did in four days. Jobs took credit for the work and reportedly earned US$5000, but paid Wozniak only $350, which he said was half. [1] Reportedly, Steve Jobs' inflated share comes from the amount of circuitry Jobs was able to eliminate, making the game much cheaper to produce, for which Nolan Bushnell paid a handsome bonus which Jobs kept for himself.

The success of the game resulted in the development of Super Breakout a couple of years later. While ostensibly very similar to Breakout - the layout, colour overlay, sound and general behaviour of the game is indentical - Super Breakout is a microprocessor game instead of discrete logic, programmed using an early M6502 chip. Super Breakout is thus emulated in MAME and has also featured in a number of different Atari compilation packs, while the original Breakout has not.

The key difference in gameplay between Super Breakout and the original is the three different and more advanced game types which the player can choose between. 'Double' gives the player control of two bats at the same time, one placed above the other, and two balls. Losing a life occurs only when both balls go out of play, and points are doubled while the player is able to juggle both balls without losing either. 'Cavity' retains the single bat and ball, but the wall contains two other balls trapped inside which the player must reach and free, before they too can be used to destroy additional bricks like the second ball in Double. Again, points are increased for this, but triple points are available if the player can keep his original ball and both freed ones going at once. The last option, 'Progressive', has but the single standard bat and ball throughout the game, but as the ball hits the paddle, the entire wall gradually advances downwards step by step, gaining in speed the longer the ball lasts. This is by far the most interesting of the three variants, and adds an whole new level of skill and urgency in breaking through the lower bricks to reach the higher-scoring ones above before the wall overwhelms the player.

External links

• WebSE Breakout, play the classic Breakout within a Macintosh System 7 Simulation.
• MobyGames' entry for Breakout
• Bat and Ball Java Game - Plays in a Web Browser
• Brickout - an Atari 2600 Breakout replica.
• The LGames Project includes two Breakout implementations, LBreakout and LBreakout2.

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