Influenced by the seminal 1972 Atari arcade game Pong. In Breakout, a layer of bricks lines, and the goal is to destroy them all by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The arcade game was released in Japan. An Atari VCS port was released in 1978 which used color graphics instead of a monochrome screen with a colored overlay.
Breakout was a worldwide commercial success in arcades, among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in both the United States and then among the top three highest-grossing arcade video games of 1977 in the US and Japan. The sequel, Super Breakout, became the pack-in game for the Atari 5200 console in 1982.
Breakout was an influential game that had an impact on the video game and computer industries. While the concept was predated by Clean Sweep (1974), Breakout spawned an entire genre of clones. Ten years the concept found new legs with 1986 which itself spawned dozens of imitators. In Japan, the genre is known as block ("block breaker") games. Breakout was also the basis and inspiration for certain aspects of the Apple II personal computer and arcade shoot 'em up game Space Invaders (1978).
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 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.
The highest score achievable for one player is 896; this is done by worth 448 points per screen. Once the second 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 896 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 1,344 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 featured artwork that revealed the game's plot to be that of a prison escape. According to this release, the player is actually playing as 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, with others following.
The original arcade version was ported to 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 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 in addition to describing gameplay, especially in look-alike games and remakes.
Atari's 1977 dedicated Video Pinball console includes a game.
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