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"Breakout" is an arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. It was conceptualized by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, influenced by the 1972 Atari arcade game Pong, and built by Steve Wozniak aided by Steve Jobs. The game was ported to multiple platforms and upgraded to video games such as "Super Breakout". In addition, Breakout was the basis and inspiration for books, video games, film, and the Apple II personal computer.
In the game, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen. A ball travels across the screen, bouncing off the top and side walls of the screen. When a brick is hit, the ball bounces away and the brick is destroyed. The player loses a turn when the ball touches the bottom of the screen. To prevent this from happening, the player has a movable paddle to bounce the ball upward, keeping it in play.
Breakout, a discrete logic (non-microprocessor) game, was designed by Nolan Bushnell, Steve Wozniak, and Steve Bristow, all three who were involved with Atari and its Kee Games subsidiary. Bushnell was certain the game would be popular. The original arcade version of Breakout has been officially ported to several systems, such as Video Pinball, the Atari 5200 (included in Super Breakout), and the Atari 2600. After few month from the creation of the game Breakout became one of the most popular arcade games during that time.
Since the original release of Breakout, there have been many clones and updates for various platforms, known as "Breakout clones." Many unofficial variations of Breakout were created for home computer platforms such as Apple II Plus, TRS-80 and PC. A version of the game called Little Brick Out was included on the DOS 3.2 System Master disk for the Apple II. Disney Club Penguin also has a version of this game called Ice Bricks in mission 3, "Case of the Missing Coins", with 10 levels. In 2011 Atari S.A. released and updated version of Breakout, Breakout Boost. The game is similar to the original with the chief difference being the addition of improved graphics and deeper gameplay features such as power ups (Fire, Acid, Splitting, and Grenade Balls), unique brick types (Exploding, Mystery, x4, and Metal bricks), and Boost Control. The faster your ball goes, the more points you’ll get. On the 37th anniversary of the game's release, Google released a secret version of Breakout. In order for users to access it, they had to type "Atari Breakout" on the Images search section. After clicking enter, the search makes the images turn different colors and a little ball and stick are seen at the bottom. This is still accessible as of the release date.
This program is a sample version of "Breakout" very similar to the original version of the game. To play the game run the file called game.py in Python's interactive shell. Pygame module is the most important part of this project. Before running the project make sure that you have installed that module. You can download the module from this website: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pygame . Installing pygame module is easy and does not require any specific knowledge.