A Complete History of Breakout

[Retro Rogue]

Join Retro Rogue at ClassicGaming.Com as, for the first time ever, he takes you through the full story behind the Atari classic Breakout. Get the real scoop on who actually designed the final version that hit the arcades. Here's a hint.....it wasn't Woz!

[supercat]

Join Retro Rogue at ClassicGaming.Com as, for the first time ever, he takes you through the full story behind the Atari classic Breakout. Get the real scoop on who actually designed the final version that hit the arcades. Here's a hint.....it wasn't Woz!

 

Is there any surviving record of how Woz' original design worked? If I recall, Woz was a fan of 128-bit dynamic shift registers. My design inclination would be to design the game with eight rows of 16 bricks. For a two-player game, use two 128-bit shift register chips, one per player, and a 16-bit shifter (probably formed with two 74164's). The two 128-bit shifters would together form a 256-bit shifter which would be clocked continuously (clocking 32 bits every scan line--16 during the visible portion), and bricks would be scanned in groups of nine lines.

 

During the displayed portion of the first line of each group, the input to the 16-bit shifter would come from the 256-bit shift register. Hitting a brick would cause the current cell to be zeroed instead of looping back. At all other times it would loop to itself. During the displayed portion of the last line of each group, the player's 128-bit shift register would clock data from the 16-bit shifter; at all other times it would loop back to itself.

 

Switching players would require adding or dropping 16 shift register counts. This could perhaps be done most readily by having a circuit to add or stifle one count per scan line for 16 lines, but it could be done more dramatically by adding or stifling one count per frame for 16 frames; the latter may or may not require extra logic depending upon whether the frame counter would be needed for other things (e.g. a delay before serving up the next ball).

 

Of course, an alternative would be to use the two 128-bit shifters separately and multiplex/demutiplex them for the current player, but what'd be the fun of that?

 

Anyone know if Woz' game did anything like that?

[Retro Rogue]

Is there any surviving record of how Woz' original design worked?

 

No on the Atari end. The proto is long long gone, and it was hard enough just tracking down who actually made the final game.

 

Your best bet is to directly ask him all this over at his site.

[rolenta]

Good article with the exception that Breakout was not one of the launch titles for the VCS in 1977. Breakout was released the following year during the second wave of games. Super Breakout was released as a Sears exclusive for a short period in 1979 before being released as an Atari title.

[Retro Rogue]

Good article with the exception that Breakout was not one of the launch titles for the VCS in 1977. Breakout was released the following year during the second wave of games.

 

Thanks for the catch Lenny, don't know why I thought I had a numbered Breakout in my collection.

 

Super Breakout was released as a Sears exclusive for a short period in 1979 before being released as an Atari title.

 

Except that the article is referring to the arcade Super Breakout, which was released in 1978. I just threw in the 2600 Breakout and Super Breakout commercials because they were the only related commercials I could find.

[Pinball Wizzard]

Thanks for the interesting article!

 

So, simply put, concept of Breakout appering during brainstorm session of Steve Bristow and Nolan Bushnell in 1975 and was the thought of either Steve or Nolan (not exactly known who) in pursuit of distancing from Pong yet making something in the same genre. First commercial availability was in arcade Take 7 in 1975 which were done by Fun Games Inc. which were ex-Atari employees who just stolen idea. The version featured in Take 7 is horisontal (are there any screenshots? The article shows only caption of what I believe is flyer.) And real arcade Breakout was made into production in 1976 and were ghost-constructed by Steve Wozniak for Steve Jobs who finally robbed him and took credit for his work. Have I understood everything right?

[Retro Rogue]

Thanks for the interesting article!

 

So, simply put, concept of Breakout appering during brainstorm session of Steve Bristow and Nolan Bushnell in 1975 and was the thought of either Steve or Nolan (not exactly known who)

 

As stated, it was the group of them that brainstormed, no one individual taking credit.

 

in pursuit of distancing from Pong yet making something in the same genre.

 

No, in distancing themselves from bland PONG style games. Not to distance themselves from the ball and bat genre.

 

 

The version featured in Take 7 is horisontal (are there any screenshots? The article shows only caption of what I believe is flyer.)

 

Just the flyer.

 

And real arcade Breakout was made into production in 1976 and were ghost-constructed by Steve Wozniak for Steve Jobs who finally robbed him and took credit for his work. Have I understood everything right?

 

No, one of the prototype versions was designed by Wozniak/Jobs. The production model was not.