Breakout is an arcade game developed by Atari, Inc and introduced on May 13, 1976. It was conceptualized by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, and influenced by the 1972 arcade game Pong, also by Atari.
Breakout begins with eight rows of bricks, with each two rows a different color. 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 ricochet the ball against the bricks and eliminate them.
If the player's paddle misses the ball's rebound, he or she loses a turn. The player has three turns to try to clear two screens of bricks.
The maximum score that a player can achieve is 896, by eliminating two screens of bricks of 448 points each. Once the second screen of bricks is destroyed, the ball in play harmlessly bounces off empty walls until the player finally relinquishes the game, as no additional screens are provided.
- Yellow: 1 Point
- Green: 3 Points
- Orange: 5 Points
- Red: 7 Points
- The paddle shrinks to one-half its size after the ball has broken through the red row and hit the upper wall.
- In addition, ball speed increases at specific intervals:
- after four hits
- after twelve hits,
- and after making contact with the orange and red rows.