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Breakout (video game)

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Breakout
Developer(s)Atari
Publisher(s)Atari
Designer(s)Steve Wozniak
Release1976
Genre(s)Arcade
Mode(s)Up to 2 players, alternating turns
For other uses of this term, see Breakout (disambiguation).

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 to bounce the ball back into play.

The game 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.

History & Development

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

Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs worked at Atari, and took on the project from Al Alcorn, the project's manager. Jobs turned around and enlisted Wozniak to design the game, which he did in four days. However, Atari was unable to use Steve Wozniak's design. In his usual zest to design the board as elegant as possible, he also cut down the amount of TTL (transistor-transistor logic) chips to just 42 total. This final design he submitted through Steve Jobs, however, made it impossible to manufacture - it was just too compact and complicated to be feasible with Atari's then current manufacturing methods. Jobs still got paid for the design, and because of a bonus clause in the contract based on the amount of TTL's cut ($100 per TTL) he earned a US$5000 bonus. However, he only paid Wozniak $350, which he stated was half of the claimed $700 design fee. Atari wound up having to design their own version for production, which ultimately contained about 100 TTL's.

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, color overlay, sound, and general behaviour of the game is identical – Super Breakout is a microprocessor based game instead of discrete logic, programmed using an early M6502 chip. Super Breakout is thus able to 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.

File:Breakout2600.png
Atari 2600 home version of Breakout.

Game Play

Breakout

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. 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. To add to the challenge, the paddle shrinks to one-half its size after the ball has broken through the red row and hit the upper wall. In addition, ball speed increases at specific intervals: after four hits, after twelve hits, and after making contact with the orange and red rows.

The maximum score that one player can achieve is 896, by eliminating two screens of bricks of 448 points each. Once the second screen of bricks is destroyed, the ball in play harmlessly bounces off empty walls until the player finally 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 1344 points if he or she is adept enough to keep the third ball in play that long. Once the third screen is eliminated, the game is over.

Super Breakout

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

  • 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 of Breakout, but two other balls are enclosed on the other side of the wall, which the player must free before they, too, can be used to destroy additional bricks. Points are increased for this, but triple points are available if the player can keep all three balls in play.
  • Progressive also has the single bat and ball, but as the ball hits the paddle, the entire wall gradually advances downwards step by step, gaining in speed the longer the ball lasts in play. This is by far the most interesting of the three variants, and adds a 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.

Breakout 2000

There was also a reinvented Breakout 2000 game for the failed Atari Jaguar game console, which featured an ongoing storyline. In it, the character of Bouncer must rescue Daisy and his friends from the evil Batnix. With advice of Coach Steel, he travels different lands to rescue his friends:

  • Tutorial: Bouncer must break out of Batnix's prison to rescue his friends. After that, he must escape a wolf.
  • Egypt: Against a backdrop of Egyptian desert sits a giant pyramid, its secrets hidden from view. Only total destruction will unlock all its treasures. Beneath the pyramid are secret tombs through which Bouncer must battle in order to reach the Mummy's Lair, where a final battle will rescue his first friend.
  • Farm: Bouncer must use his Breakout skills to defeat sheep, chickens, and ducks to rescue his second friend. After that, he must outrun another wolf.
  • Castle: A giant Dragon carries a captive into a majestic, towering medieval castle surrounded by a deep moat. Bouncer must first defeat the knight guards on the drawbridge before he can enter the castle. Once Bouncer has completed several different challenges, he must climb the castle tower to the Dragon’s nest and do battle with the Dragon to save another one of his friends.
  • Factory: Batnix has devised an evil robot henchman to guard his captives in his diabolical factory. A series of devious, puzzle-like levels must be negotiated before Bouncer battles the deranged robot to complete his mission.
  • Space: Bouncer launches a rocket into space in order to chase the evil Batnix and rescue Daisy. Bouncer must use his Breakout skills to deflect killer asteroids.

Ports

The original arcade version of Breakout has been officially ported to several systems. Most notably:


Clones

This amazingly simple yet addictive game is the basis of countless remakes, many bearing the name "breakout":

  • Arcade remakes include Atari's own Super Breakout and Taito's Arkanoid, not to mention Namco's Quester.
  • Computer game remakes, both freeware and commercial, include Blitz, DX-Ball, Poing, Blasterball, Winbrick, Javanoid, and BreakQuest.
  • Handheld devices have had variants ported to them as well. The most notable are those designed for rotary control, such as the iPod and the BlackBerry's Brick Breaker. The iRiver got Brickmania on the RockBox OS. An earlier handheld variant was Nintendo's Alleyway, released in 1989 for the original Game Boy system.
  • A version called Bebop was made in the 90s.
  • Later versions of Turbo Pascal included Breakout, with source code, as an example of the Object Pascal language.

Trivia

Breakout directly influenced Steve Wozniak's design for the Apple II computer - "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." (Connick, Jack. "...And Then There Was Apple." Call-A.P.P.L.E. Oct 1986: 24.). This included his design of color graphics circuitry and the now infamous beep and click sound circuitry. It also directly influenced his design of Integer BASIC (which he referred to as "Game Basic"), with his Integer BASIC version of Breakout being the first "proof of concept" application running on the prototype Apple II. His desire to play Breakout on his new computer also led to the addition of a paddle interface, and the ultimate bundling of paddle controllers and a cassette tape containing the code for Breakout for the Apple II's commercial release.

Sources

External links

Blasterball 2: Remix - WildGames
Blasterball 2: Holidays - WildGames
  • Ball Attack Breakout style game with fresh ideas and new twists.
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