Brad Stewart‘s 1978 Atari 2600 conversion of the pioneering 1976 arcade game, Breakout, is a software-based cartridge version that most people who’ve played the game will be familiar with. Mainly because – as far as I know – the original arcade version of Breakout is currently un-emulatable, because it utilizes mechanical components that prevent it from being played as a ROM file in something like MAME.

The Atari 2600 port of Breakout is the classic single-player bat and ball offshoot of Pong, where you use a moveable paddle to bounce a ball upwards into a wall of bricks, and score points for each brick you hit (removing it from the wall).

If you fail to return the ball and it drops out of the bottom of the playfield, you lose one of your five lives. If you manage to clear all six rows of bricks you’re awarded a bonus and begin again with a second wall of bricks.

Breakout can be played with a joystick, or with analogue paddles (the latter being by far the best way of playing the game as it provides much more precise control).

There are several game variations available, including ‘Breakthru‘ (the ball will go straight through bricks instead of bouncing back), ‘Timed Breakout‘ (you have a time limit to gain as many points as you can), and ‘Invisible Breakout‘ (the bricks are only visible for a short while after one of them is hit). Other variations allow you to catch the ball or even control the direction of the ball.

The game can be played at a variety of different difficulty levels and also features a simultaneous two-player mode, where each player controls their own paddle and must score more points than their opponent.

While Breakout is a very simple game, it was in fact a big influence on other, similar games that followed, and is often cited as the predecessor to other more contemporary bat and ball games, such as Arkanoid and Devilish.

The Atari 2600 version of Breakout had sold 256,265 units by 1980, and went on to sell a total of 1,650,336 units by the end of 1983. A follow-up, called Super Breakout, was released the same year as this to further capitalise on the growing popularity of the game.

More: Breakout on Wikipedia