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Mouse to move the paddle.

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Breakout – A brief history of this gaming legend

Arcade games have come a long way since the days of bulky coin operated machines which offered only a hand-full of genres, blocky single toned graphics and simple 2 button joy stick game-play. Now we have an endless choice of video game consoles boasting super fast processors, top quality high resolution graphics and complex game-play involving new forms of interactivity. Though even the most complicated games available these days can trace their development back to a classic arcade title created by restless software developers in the 70’s ad 80’s. At that time the computer game entertainment industry was still in its infancy and possibilities were limitless; the public either went to the local arcade to get their daily gaming fix or if you could afford it, you went out and bought an Atari games console.

In the early to mid 1970’s one of the most popular games available was a simple sports genre game called “Pong” a title created by Atari employee Alan Alcorn. This simple 2-D game was a two-player computer generated tennis simulation; each person could move a long thin bar up and down on their side of the screen; this would then rebound a small ball towards the other player. Due to the success of Pong several specialized consoles were created, including a home console that had two knobs which could be turned to move the player’s racket up and down the screen.

On noticing the publics dwindling response to the original Pong arcade game, Nolan Bushnell of the Atari Company together with Steve Bristow devised a new idea for a single player re-make called Breakout. Whether you lived through the 80’s or are currently enjoying the high-speed 3-D games of today, you definitely will have come across this iconic game, although possibly under another title such as ‘Araknoid’. Breakout uses a vertical play screen with the racket (or rebound bar) at the bottom and a layer of bricks at the top of the screen. On beginning a ball is released and players must position the bar correctly so that the ball rebounds and hits the bricks without letting the ball fall through the bottom of the screen. The ultimate goal is to destroy all of the bricks before moving on to the next level, remembering that each time you jump up a level the ball shrinks and speeds up to increase the challenge.

Over the years various other gaming companies have jumped onto the bandwagon releasing their own versions of the breakout classic including Taitos ‘Araknoid’ and Namcos ‘Quester’ and there was even a 3-D version created which was met with little enthusiasm from gamers. In 2010 the popular fast food chain Taco Bell gave away a special Atari classics collection disk with kid’s meals which included a revamped version of breakout called ‘Super Breakout’. To Atari’s surprise it was a huge hit with American gaming enthusiasts with its popularity spreading over the border and into other countries as well. The main additions to the new Super breakout title included the inclusion of several extra brick bonuses which would freeze the ball, slow it down or increase the size of the rebound bar. There were also 3 very different modes of game play available; you could play with two bats at once, you could free 2 extra balls and play with 3 at once and finally the most popular mode involved the top layers of bricks gradually moving downwards, adding an exciting edge to the game-play.

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Rank.	Player	Score	Comments
1	kenny	2950	level 3 :(
2	tanner	1500	I'm getting BETTER at this!!!
3	tanner	1235	That's higher then my last one
4	tanner	500	YAY!!!

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