Still a big fan of the art genre “Atari 2600 cartridges that make the games seem way more interesting than they are”:
What is this weird astronaut man even doing? I’m in awe of this.
I’ve often wondered about the history/chronology of the multitude of “Breakout clones” out there, and this week seemed like as good a time as any to look into that. The first Breakout, released by Atari in 1976, is the genuine original, and was essentially developed as a more advanced, single-player Pong. One of the original circuit boards for the game was designed by these freaking nerds:
Those guys, Steve Wozniak, and Steve Jobs, used some of the innovations devised when making the Breakout board when designing the Apple I, and we all know what happened after that. Thanks, video games!
Breakout was simple enough that it spawned countless imitators over the years – Woz himself made his own called Little Brick Out, Taito expanded on the concept with the super popular Arkanoid, and Nintendo added its characters to it in Kirby’s Block Ball. They’re everywhere. You probably have like 3 of them on your phone right now and you don’t even realize it. Atari also made several of its own follow-ups, including the weird 1991 remake Off the Wall and, perhaps more importantly, a direct sequel and this week’s game: Super Breakout.
The gameplay of Super Breakout doesn’t stray far from the original – you move around a small paddle and hit a ball into bricks until there are no more bricks (or no more balls). It’s still a pretty fun concept. However, there are a handful of game modes that are all quite different from regular Breakout, and they’re all pretty crazy. You’ve got “Cavity,” in which you need to operate two paddles and can unlock additional balls, “Double,” in which there are two paddles and two balls all the time, and “Progressive,” in which the bricks move down and the game gets progressively faster, creating an unholy mix of Breakout and Space Invaders.
That one’s probably my favorite. For a simple little game, it can get pretty crazy. Each mode also offers an alternating two-player mode, in case you want to find out if you’re better than this at someone.
In the unlikely event that you have and like to play games on an Atari 5200, there’s a bit better version of Super Breakout available for that (it was also a pack-in title, so it’s not hard to find, as far as these things go). No matter what system you get this on, it won’t cost you more than a couple of bucks. If you like this sort of game in general, this one’s a solid pickup with a good number of different game modes.
I feel like we’ve established what this game looks like, but here’s one more screenshot anyway – this time with double paddle action:
It’s approximately twice the fun.
Next week’s game is a portable title, and I believe the first one to star one of video gaming’s weirdest and most iconic villains. What could it be?! You’ll have to check back next week to find out.