Breakout (video game)

Breakout begins with eight rows of bricks, with two rows each of a different color. The color order from the bottom up is yellow, green, orange and red. Using a single ball, the player must knock down as many bricks as possible by using the walls and the paddle below to hit the ball against the bricks and eliminate them. If the player's paddle misses the ball's rebound, they will lose a turn. The player has three turns to try to clear two screens of bricks. Yellow bricks earn one point each, green bricks earn three points, orange bricks earn five points and the top-level red bricks score seven points each. The paddle shrinks to one-half its size after the ball has broken through the red row and hit the upper wall. Ball speed increases at specific intervals: after four hits, after twelve hits, and after making contact with the orange and red rows. The highest score achievable for one player is 864; this is done by eliminating two screens of bricks worth 432 points per screen. Once the second screen of bricks is destroyed, the ball in play harmlessly bounces off empty walls until the player restarts the game, as no additional screens are provided. However, a secret way to score beyond the 864 maximum is to play the game in two-player mode. If "Player One" completes the first screen on their third and last ball, then immediately and deliberately allows the ball to "drain", Player One's second screen is transferred to "Player Two" as a third screen, allowing Player Two to score a maximum of 1,312 points if they are adept enough to keep the third ball in play that long. Once the third screen is eliminated, the game is over. The original arcade cabinet of Breakout has artwork framing the game's plot as a prison escape. The player is one of a prison's inmates attempting to knock a ball and chain into a wall of their prison cell with a mallet. If the player successfully destroys the wall in-game, the inmate escapes with others following. ==Development==

A precursor to Breakout was Clean Sweep, released by Ramtek in 1974. In that game, the player uses a paddle to hit a ball up towards a playfield of dots, which disappear as the ball moves through the dots; the goal is to achieve a clean sweep by erasing all the dots. Clean Sweep was one of the top ten best-selling arcade video games of 1974 and sold a total of 3,500 arcade cabinets. Breakout, a discrete logic (non-microprocessor) game, was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, both of whom were involved with Atari and its Kee Games subsidiary. Atari produced innovative video games using the Pong hardware as a means of competition against companies making "Pong clones". Bushnell wanted to turn Pong into a single player game, where the player would use a paddle to maintain a ball that depletes a wall of bricks. Bushnell was certain the game would be popular, and he and Bristow partnered to produce a concept. Al Alcorn was assigned as the Breakout project manager, and he began development with Cyan Engineering in 1975. Bushnell assigned Steve Jobs, who was not an engineer, to design a prototype. Jobs was offered $750, with an award for every TTL (transistor-transistor logic) chip fewer than 50. Jobs promised to complete a prototype within four days. he believed for years that Atari had promised $700 for a design using fewer than 50 chips, and $1000 for fewer than 40, stating in 1984 that "we only got 700 bucks for it". Wozniak was the engineer, and Jobs was the breadboarder and tester. Wozniak's original design used 42 chips; the final, working breadboard he and Jobs delivered to Atari used 44, but Wozniak said: "We were so tired we couldn't cut it down". The simplicity of the game created a problem when the copyright filing was denied because it "did not contain at least a minimum amount of original pictorial or graphic authorship, or authorship in sounds" and Atari appealed. In Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, then Court of Appeals Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found that the work was copyrightable. Atari was unable to use Wozniak's design. By designing the board with as few chips as possible, he made the design difficult to manufacture; it was too compact and complicated to be feasible with Atari's manufacturing methods. However, Wozniak claims Atari could not understand the design and speculates "maybe some engineer there was trying to make some kind of modification to it". Atari ended up designing their own version for production, which contained about 100 TTL chips. Wozniak found the gameplay to be the same as his original creation and could not find any differences. The arcade cabinet uses a black and white monitor, but the monitor has strips of colored cellophane placed over it so that the bricks appear to be in color. ==Ports==

A software version of Breakout was written for the Atari 2600 by Brad Stewart. The game was published in 1978, but with only six rows of bricks, and the player is given five turns to clear two walls instead of three. In the Breakthru variant, the ball does not bounce off the bricks but continues through them until it hits the wall. Atari had this term trademarked and used it in addition to Breakout to describe gameplay, especially in look-alike games and remakes. Atari's 1977 dedicated Video Pinball console includes a Breakout game. ==Reception==

In October 1976, the annual RePlay chart listed Breakout as the fifth highest-earning arcade video game of 1976 in the United States, below Midway Manufacturing's Sea Wolf, Gun Fight, and Wheels, and Atari's Indy 800. Breakout was later the third highest-earning arcade video game of 1977 in the US, below Sea Wolf and Sprint 2, and the fifth highest-earning arcade video game of 1978 in the US. Breakout had a total arcade production run of 11,000 cabinets manufactured by Atari, estimated to have generated over ( adjusted for inflation) in sales revenue. Breakout was also a commercial success for Namco in Japan. On the first annual Game Machine arcade chart, Breakout was the fourth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1976 in Japan, below Taito's Ball Park (Tornado Baseball) and Speed Race DX and Sega's Heavyweight Champ. The following year, Breakout was Japan's third highest-grossing arcade game of 1977, below only two racing games: Namco's electro-mechanical game F-1 and Taito's Speed Race DX. In total, Breakout sold 15,000 arcade units worldwide by 1981. The Atari 2600 version sold 256,265 units in 1980. Breakout went on to sell a total of 1,650,336 units by 1983. In 1989, Computer and Video Games reviewed the Atari VCS version, giving it a 24% score. In 2021, The Guardian listed Breakout as the fourth greatest video game of the 1970s, below Galaxian, Asteroids and Space Invaders. ==Legacy==

Breakout spawned an entire genre of clones. Ten years later, the concept found new legs with Taito's 1986 game Arkanoid, which itself spawned dozens of imitators. In Japan, the genre is known as block kuzushi ("block breaker") games. Tomohiro Nishikado cited Breakout as one of the original inspirations behind his hit Space Invaders (1978). He wanted to adapt the same sense of achievement and tension from destroying targets one at a time for a shooting game. Breakout directly influenced Wozniak's design for the Apple II computer. He said: "A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designed Breakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it in software now." This included his design of color graphics circuitry, the addition of game paddle support and sound, and graphics commands in Integer BASIC, with which he wrote Brick Out, a software clone of his own hardware game. Wozniak said in 1984: Re-releases and enhanced versions The success of the game resulted in Super Breakouts release in 1978. It contains three separate game modes. The home ports include Breakout as a fourth mode, using the Super Breakout visual style. Breakout 2000 for the Atari Jaguar adds a 3D playfield and additional features. A 3D Breakout-inspired game was published simply as Breakout in 2000 for Windows and PlayStation by Hasbro Interactive's Atari Interactive subsidiary. In 2011, Atari SA released an updated version of Breakout as Breakout Boost. A revamped version of the game titled, Breakout: Recharged, was released on February 10, 2022, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows and Atari VCS as part of the Atari Recharged series. It was developed by Adamvision Studios and SneakyBox. In 2025, leading up to the game's 50th anniversary, Atari released Breakout Beyond for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows. The game retains the core mechanics of the original while introducing a combo system, power-ups, abilities, and a multiplayer mode. In popular culture Pilgrim in the Microworld is an autobiography by David Sudnow detailing his obsession with Breakout. Sudnow describes studying the game's mechanics, visiting the manufacturer in Silicon Valley, and interviewing the programmers. The first-generation iPod Classic has an Easter egg where holding down the center button for a few seconds in the "About" menu causes Breakout to appear. On the 37th anniversary of the game's release, Google released a secret version of Breakout accessible by typing "atari breakout" in Google Images. The image thumbnails form the Breakout bricks, turn different colors, and after a ball and paddle appear the game begins. ==References==