Breakout (video game)

Gameplay

Breakout begins with eight rows of bricks, with each two rows 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/or the paddle below to ricochet the ball against the bricks and eliminate them. If the player's paddle misses the ball's rebound, he or she 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 896; this is done by eliminating two screens of bricks worth 448 points each. Once the second screen of bricks is destroyed, the ball in play harmlessly bounces off empty walls until the player relinquishes the game, as no additional screens are provided. However, a secret way to score beyond the 896 maximum is to play the game in two-player mode. If "Player One" completes the first screen on his or her 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 1,344 points if he is adept enough to keep the third ball in play that long. Once the third screen is eliminated, the game is over.

History and development

Breakout, a discrete logic (non-microprocessor) game, was designed by Nolan Bushnell, Steve Wozniak, and Steve Bristow, all three 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. Breakout was actually not the first single-player Pong-derived arcade game; it was preceded by RamTek's 1974 game Clean Sweep (not to be confused with the Vectrex Pac-Man clone Clean Sweep), in which the player had to deflect the ball with the paddle in order to clear the playfield of a grid of dots; this game may have helped to inspire Breakout. Al Alcorn was assigned as the Breakout project manager, and began development with Cyan Engineering in 1975. Bushnell assigned Steve Jobs 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.

Bushnell offered the bonus because he disliked how new Atari games required 150 to 170 chips; he knew that Jobs' friend Steve Wozniak, an employee of Hewlett-Packard, had designed a version of Pong that used about 30 chips. Jobs had little specialized knowledge of circuit board design but knew Wozniak was capable of producing designs with a small number of chips. He convinced Wozniak to work with him, promising to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Wozniak had no sketches and instead interpreted the game from its description. To save parts, he had "tricky little designs" difficult to understand for most engineers. Near the end of development, Wozniak considered moving the high score to the screen's top, but Jobs claimed Bushnell wanted it at the bottom; Wozniak was unaware of any truth to his claims. The original deadline was met after Wozniak worked at Atari four nights straight, doing some additional designs while at his day job at Hewlett-Packard. This equated to a bonus of $5,000, which Jobs kept secret from Wozniak. Wozniak has stated he only received payment of $350; 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 "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."

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. However, the monitor has strips of colored cellophane placed over it so that the bricks appear to be in color.

Ports

The original arcade version of Breakout has been officially ported to several systems, such as Video Pinball, the Atari 5200 (included in Super Breakout), and the Atari 2600.

The Atari 2600 port was programmed by Brad Stewart. Stewart had been working on a backup project for the Atari 2600, which was eventually canceled. Consequently, Brad and Ian Shepherd were both available to program Breakout for the Atari 2600. They decided to compete in the original version of Breakout for the programming rights. In the end, Brad won. In development, he didn't receive help of the original designers (and was unaware who they were), and felt that there were few obstacles to overcome. Difficulties arose with the Television Interface Adaptor. The game was published in 1978 and was conceptually the same, but with a few key differences. First, there were only six rows of bricks. Second, the player is given five turns to clear two walls instead of three. One notable addition was the Breakthru variant, where the ball does not bounce off of the bricks, but continues through them until it hits the wall. Atari had this term trademarked and used it as a sister term to Breakout in order to describe gameplay, especially in look-alike games and remakes.

In 2010, the game was re-released in a Taco Bell promotion, in which a series of four classic Atari game CD-ROMs (Centipede, Lunar Lander, Super Breakout and Asteroids) were given away in kids' meals, and were also available for purchase separately. Although the disc is titled Super Breakout, the game is a simulation of the original TTL Breakout, and also features an "evolved" gameplay mode. Legacy Engineering developed this series of games for the promotion.

Super Breakout

The success of the game resulted in the development of Super Breakout a couple of years later. It was released on 126 different machines. While ostensibly very similar to Breakout – the layout, sound, and general behavior of the game is identical – Super Breakout is a microprocessor based game instead of discrete logic, programmed by Asteroids programmer Ed Logg using an early MOS 6502 chip. He developed Super Breakout after hearing that Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, wanted Breakout updated. Super Breakout can therefore be emulated in MAME and is also featured in a number of different Atari compilation packs. The original Breakout has not been featured, since there is no processor in Breakout — the game would have been more "simulated" than emulated.

In Super Breakout, there are three different and more advanced game types from which the player can choose:

Other platforms

The original iPod had an Easter Egg where you could hold down the center button for a few seconds in the "About" menu, and Breakout would appear. Glu Mobile released a licensed cellular phone version of Super Breakout that includes the original game as well as updated gameplay, skins, and modes. In 2008, Atari released the game for the iPhone and iPod Touch via Apple's App Store.

The arcade and Atari 2600 versions of Super Breakout were made available on Microsoft's Game Room service for its Xbox 360 console and for Windows-based PCs on May 5, 2010 and September 1, 2010 respectively.

Breakout 2000

There was also a reinvented Breakout 2000 game for the Atari Jaguar game console. The object of the game remains the same but in a 3D playfield. There are a total of ten different phases to survive, each consisting of five playfields. Each playfield is more difficult to clear than the prior one, and each phase adds more difficulty and features.

The game features good and bad power-ups somewhat similar to Arkanoid. There are unbreakable bricks, multi-hit bricks and stacked bricks. Ball movement is limited to the lower level of stacked bricks, so breaking a lower brick allows the stacked bricks to fall into the now vacated location. The game also features a two-player mode that allows two people (or a person and the computer) to compete head to head. In this mode a player's ball can loop around to the other player's playfield and break the opponent's bricks. A double ″2X″ bonus is awarded for breaking the opponent's bricks.

PC and PlayStation

Breakout was once again updated for the PC and also for the PlayStation. Developed by Supersonic Software and published by Hasbro Interactive's Atari Interactive subsidiary. This version featured an ongoing storyline. In it, the character of Bouncer must rescue Daisy and friends from the evil Batnix after he attacks their island. With advice of Coach Steel, he travels to different lands to rescue his friends before Batnix takes over the world:

Mobile

In 2011 Atari S.A. released and updated version of Breakout, Breakout Boost. The game is similar to the original with the chief difference being the addition of improved graphics and expanded gameplay features such as power ups (Fire, Acid, Splitting, and Grenade Balls), unique brick types (Exploding, Mystery, x4, and Metal bricks), and Boost Control. The faster your ball goes, the more points you’ll get.

Unofficial variations

Many unofficial variations of Breakout were created for home computer platforms such as Apple II Plus, TRS-80 and PC. A version of the game called Little Brick Out was included on the DOS 3.2 System Master disk for the Apple II. Disney Club Penguin also has a version of this game called Ice Bricks in mission 3, "Case of the Missing Coins", with 10 levels.

Apple II

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 Little Brick Out, a software clone of his own hardware game. Wozniak said in 1984:

Basically, all the game features were put in just so I could show off the game I was familiar with—Breakout—at the Homebrew Computer Club. It was the most satisfying day of my life [when] I demonstrated Breakout—totally written in BASIC. It seemed like a huge step to me. After designing hardware arcade games, I knew that being able to program them in BASIC was going to change the world.

Pilgrim in the Microworld

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.

Super Breakout story

For Kid Stuff Records, John Braden recorded a 7-in 33 ¹⁄₃ RPM record telling the story of Super Breakout. This science fiction story dealt with NASA astronaut Captain John Stewart Chang returning from a routine mission transporting titanium ore from Io to space station New California. He encounters a rainbow barrier, presumably a force of nature, that seems to have no end on either side. He has three lobbing missiles of white light that he can bounce off the hull of his shuttle, and they prove able to break through the layers of the force field. With his life support systems failing, what follows is a test of endurance turned game as he strives to break through the barrier in space.

Other games

Since the original release of Breakout, there have been many clones and updates for various platforms, known as "Breakout clones".

Google commemorative version

On the 37th anniversary of the game's release, Google released a secret version of Breakout. Users can access it by typing "Atari Breakout" on the Images search section. After running the search, the results' image thumbnails form the Breakout bricks, turn different colors, and a little ball and paddle appear at the bottom, after which the game begins. The paddle is controlled by the mouse / touchpad or arrow keys, and clearing the level starts a new one with a randomly selected image search term.