Breakout

Breakout is a 1976 action video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades; in Japan, it was released by Namco. The game was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow and prototyped via discrete logic chips by Steve Wozniak with assistance from Steve Jobs. In the game, eight rows of bricks line the top portion of the screen, and the player's goal is to destroy the bricks by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The concept was predated by Ramtek's Clean Sweep (1974), but the game's designers were influenced by Atari's own Pong (1972). The arcade version of Breakout uses a monochrome display underneath a translucent colored overlay. The game was a commercial success. It was among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in the U.S. and Japan, and among the top three in both countries for 1977. A port of the game was published in 1978 for the Atari 2600 with color graphics. An arcade sequel was released in 1978, Super Breakout, which introduced multiple bouncing balls. Wozniak and Jobs subsequently founded the Apple Computer Company alongside Ronald Wayne. The company's Apple II computer, designed primarily by Wozniak, features hardware elements inspired by Breakout's logic design. Atari was involved in the copyright lawsuit Atari Games Corp. v. Oman over its ability to register copyright protection for Breakout, ultimately prevailing in establishing that the game is copyrightable as an audiovisual work. The game spawned an entire genre of clone games. In Japan, the genre is known as block kuzushi ("block breaker") games. Breakout inspired Taito's Arkanoid (1986), which itself led to many imitators. It also influenced the game design of Taito's arcade shooter Space Invaders (1978).

Source: Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0 — Breakout (video game) · retrieved October 19, 2026

Developer

Atari, Inc.

Publisher

Atari, Inc.

First release

May 13, 1976

Series

Breakout

Cover

Official thumbnail

Record ID

Q177491