Breakout (video Game)

''Breakout'' is an arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and released on May 13, 1976. ''Breakout'' was released in Japanese arcades by Namco. The game was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow and prototyped via discrete logic chips by Steve Wozniak with assistance from Steve Jobs. In the game, eight rows of bricks line the top portion of the screen, and the player's goal is to destroy the bricks by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The concept was predated by Ramtek's ''Clean Sweep'' (1974), but the game's designers were influenced by Atari's own ''Pong'' (1972). The arcade version of ''Breakout'' uses a monochrome display underneath a translucent colored overlay.

The game was a worldwide commercial success. It was among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in the U.S. and Japan, and among the top three in both countries for 1977. A port of the game was published in 1978 for the Atari 2600 with color graphics. An arcade sequel was released in 1978, '' Super Breakout'', which introduced multiple bouncing balls. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs went on to found the Apple Computer Company with Ronald Wayne. The company's influential Apple II computer, designed mostly by Wozniak, has technical elements inspired by ''Breakout'''s hardware.

Atari was involved in a Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, series of court cases over their ability to copyright ''Breakout'', and they were ultimately allowed to do so. The game spawned an entire genre of :Breakout clones, clones nonetheless. In Japan, the genre is known as ''block kuzushi'' ("block breaker") games. ''Breakout'' was the inspiration for Taito's ''Arkanoid'' (1986), which spawned dozens of imitators. It also influenced the game design of Taito's ''Space Invaders'' (1978).

Gameplay

''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.

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". 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; Wozniak, Steven: " iWoz", a: pages 147–148, b: page 180. W. W. Norton, 2006. Kent, Steven: ''The Ultimate History of Video Games'', pages 71–73. Three Rivers Press, 2001. .Classic Gaming: A Complete History of Breakout
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 of 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. Via

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 ''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 Breakout''s 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.

On March 25, 2025, a reimagining of ''Breakout'' was released 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

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1976 video games
Arcade video games
Atari 2600 games
Atari arcade games
Discrete video arcade games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Namco arcade games
Paddle-and-ball video games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games set in prison
Multiplayer hotseat games