Breakout (video game)

Breakout is an arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and released on May 13, 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak, based on conceptualization from Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, who were influenced by the seminal 1972 Atari arcade game Pong. In Breakout, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen 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 by Namco. Breakout was a worldwide commercial success, among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in both the United States and Japan and then among the top three highest-grossing arcade video games of 1977 in the US and Japan. The 1978 Atari VCS port uses color graphics instead of a monochrome screen with colored overlay.

While the concept was predated by Ramtek's Clean Sweep (1974), Breakout spawned an entire genre of clones. It was the inspiration for aspects of the Apple II computer and Taito's Space Invaders (1978). An official sequel was released in 1978, Super Breakout, which eventually became the pack-in game for the Atari 5200 console in 1982. Super Breakout introduced multiple balls in play at once, which became a common feature in the genre. In 1986 the Breakout concept found new legs with Taito's Arkanoid, which itself spawned dozens of imitators. In Japan, the genre is known as block kuzushi ("block breaker") games.