It might come as a stinging shock to people that Atari’s Breakout arcade game is 37 years old. Some of the sting might be mitigated, however, by the clever way in which Google has seen fit to pay tribute to the milestone.
Breakout was a clever one-player riff on Atari’s first (and, in fact, the world’s first) mass-produced coin-op video game PONG. Instead of two-people bouncing a little blip of a ball back and forth with paddles, one person could bat the ball with a paddle situated along the bottom of the screen, against a wall of bricks that would shrink in size with each impact. The speed of the ball would increase as the size of the brick wall would decrease, leading to a mad scramble to eliminate the bricks before inevitably missing the ball and losing a life.
The game was conceived by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but actually assembled by an early, vegetarian hippie Atari employee and his nerdly friend. Their names were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
To see Google’s own riff on the concept, just enter Atari Breakout into their image search field. For more history of Breakout, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.