Breakout is the arcade game Atari released in 1976, designed with input from Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs before they founded Apple, reducing the video game to its purest expression: a paddle, a ball, and a wall of bricks to be demolished bounce by bounce. The "Breakaway IV" variant corresponds to one of the title's home reissues, part of Atari's habit of relaunching its classics under slightly different names depending on the market or the package.
Whatever name is on the box, it's the same game that laid the groundwork for the entire brick-breaker genre, from Arkanoid onward. Its brutal simplicity remains, to this day, a lesson in design.
If you liked this one
