| Breakout | |
|---|---|
 North American arcade flyer | |
| Developer | Atari, Inc. |
| Publishers | |
| Designers |
|
| Programmers | Steve Wozniak Gary Waters 2600 Brad Stewart |
| Series | Breakout |
| Platforms | Arcade,Atari 2600 |
| Release | Arcade2600 |
| Genre | Action |
| Modes | Single-player,multiplayer |
Breakout is a 1976action video game developed and published byAtari, Inc.[7] forarcades; in Japan, it was released byNamco. The game was designed byNolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow and prototyped via discrete logic chips bySteve Wozniak with assistance fromSteve 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 byRamtek'sClean Sweep (1974), but the game's designers were influenced by Atari's ownPong (1972). The arcade version ofBreakout uses amonochrome display underneath atranslucent 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 theAtari 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 theApple Computer Company withRonald Wayne. The company's influentialApple II computer, designed mostly by Wozniak, has technical elements inspired byBreakout's hardware.
Atari was involved in aseries of court cases over their ability to copyrightBreakout, and they were ultimately allowed to do so. The game spawned an entire genre ofclones nonetheless. In Japan, the genre is known asblock kuzushi ("block breaker") games.Breakout was the inspiration forTaito'sArkanoid (1986), which spawned dozens of imitators. It also influenced the game design of Taito'sSpace Invaders (1978).
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 ofBreakout 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.
A precursor toBreakout wasClean Sweep, released byRamtek 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.[8]Clean Sweep was one of the top ten best-sellingarcade video games of 1974 and sold a total of 3,500arcade cabinets.[9]
Breakout, adiscrete logic (non-microprocessor) game, was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, both of whom were involved with Atari and itsKee Games subsidiary. Atari produced innovative video games using thePong hardware as a means of competition against companies making "Pong clones".[10] Bushnell wanted to turnPong 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 theBreakout project manager, and he began development withCyan Engineering in 1975. Bushnell assignedSteve 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.[11]
Bushnell offered the bonus because he disliked how new Atari games required 150 to 170 chips; he knew that Jobs' friendSteve Wozniak, an employee ofHewlett-Packard, had designed a version of Pong that used about 30 chips.[12] 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 thehigh 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;[13][14][15][16][17][18] 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 thebreadboarder 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".[12]
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.[19] InAtari Games Corp. v. Oman, then Court of Appeals JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg found that the work was copyrightable.[20]
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.[14][15][16][17][21][22]
Thearcade cabinet uses a black and whitemonitor, but the monitor has strips of coloredcellophane placed over it so that the bricks appear to be in color.
A software version ofBreakout was written for theAtari 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 termtrademarked and used it in addition toBreakout to describe gameplay, especially in look-alike games and remakes.
Atari's 1977 dedicatedVideo Pinball console includes aBreakout game.
In October 1976, the annualRePlay chart listedBreakout as the fifth highest-earningarcade video game of 1976 in the United States, belowMidway Manufacturing'sSea Wolf,Gun Fight, andWheels, and Atari'sIndy 800.[23]Breakout was later the third highest-earning arcade video game of 1977 in the US, belowSea Wolf andSprint 2,[24][25] and the fifth highest-earningarcade video game of 1978 in the US.[26]Breakout had a total arcade production run of 11,000 cabinets manufactured by Atari, estimated to have generated over$11 million ($61 million adjusted for inflation) in sales revenue.[27]
Breakout was also a commercial success forNamco in Japan. On the first annualGame Machine arcade chart,Breakout was the fourth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1976 in Japan, below Taito'sBall Park (Tornado Baseball) andSpeed Race DX andSega'sHeavyweight Champ.[28] The following year,Breakout was Japan's third highest-grossingarcade game of 1977, below only tworacing games: Namco'selectro-mechanical gameF-1 and Taito'sSpeed Race DX.[29] In total,Breakout sold 15,000 arcade units worldwide by 1981.[30]
The Atari 2600 version sold 256,265 units in 1980.Breakout went on to sell a total of 1,650,336 units by 1983.[31]
In 1989,Computer and Video Games reviewed the Atari VCS version, giving it a 24% score.[32]
In 2021,The Guardian listedBreakout as the fourth greatest video game of the 1970s, belowGalaxian,Asteroids andSpace Invaders.[33]
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Breakout spawned an entire genre of clones. Ten years later, the concept found new legs withTaito's 1986 gameArkanoid, which itself spawned dozens of imitators. In Japan, the genre is known asblock kuzushi ("block breaker") games.Tomohiro Nishikado citedBreakout as one of the original inspirations behind his hitSpace Invaders (1978). He wanted to adapt the same sense of achievement and tension from destroying targets one at a time for ashooting game.[34]Breakout directly influenced Wozniak's design for theApple II computer. He said: "A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designedBreakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it in software now".[35] This included his design of color graphics circuitry, the addition of game paddle support and sound, and graphics commands inInteger BASIC, with which he wroteBrick Out, a software clone of his own hardware game.[36] Wozniak said in 1984:[12]
Basically, all the game features were put in just so I could show off the game I was familiar with—Breakout—at theHomebrew Computer Club. It was the most satisfying day of my life [when] I demonstratedBreakout—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.
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The success of the game resulted inSuper Breakout's release in 1978.[37] It contains three separate game modes. The home ports includeBreakout as a fourth mode, using theSuper Breakout visual style.
Breakout 2000 for theAtari Jaguar adds a 3D playfield and additional features.
A 3DBreakout-inspired game was published simply asBreakout in 2000 for Windows andPlayStation byHasbro Interactive'sAtari Interactive subsidiary.
In 2011,Atari SA released an updated version ofBreakout asBreakout Boost.
A revamped version of the game titled,Breakout: Recharged, was released on February 10, 2022, forNintendo Switch,PlayStation 4,PlayStation 5,Xbox One,Xbox Series X/S,Microsoft Windows andAtari VCS as part of theAtari Recharged series. It was developed by Adamvision Studios and SneakyBox.[38]
On March 25, 2025, a reimagining ofBreakout was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows.[39] The game retains the core mechanics of the original while introducing a combo system, power-ups, abilities, and a multiplayer mode.
Pilgrim in the Microworld is anautobiography by David Sudnow detailing his obsession withBreakout. Sudnow describes studying the game's mechanics, visiting the manufacturer inSilicon Valley, and interviewing the programmers.[40]
The first-generationiPod Classic has anEaster egg where holding down the center button for a few seconds in the "About" menu causesBreakout to appear.[41][42]
On the 37th anniversary of the game's release,Google released asecret version ofBreakout accessible by typing "atari breakout" inGoogle Images. The image thumbnails form theBreakout bricks, turn different colors, and after a ball and paddle appear the game begins.[43]
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