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Episode 480: Breakout (Patreon)

Published:
2022-09-05 12:00:09
Imported:
2026-06
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We don't venture into 1970s video game history too often, if only because there wasn't all that much video game history to discuss in the ’70s. A handful of consoles, a handful of breakout titles, and a whole heck of a lot of derivative works—there's only so much you can say about Pong clones and variants on Gran Trak 10, you know? But the games that did matter back then really, really mattered, and Atari's Breakout certainly qualifies in the regard. Atari Archive historian Kevin Bunch joins me this week to talk about how Breakout came to exist and how immensely influential it turned out to be. It's a bigger deal than you might think!

Art by Greg Melo and edits by Greg Leahy. Music this episode:

10:01 - Space Battleship Yamato Theme (1974)

23:51 - Breakout (PSX, 2000): Robot Rampage

37:38 - Breakout (PSX, 2000): Hay Hassle

44:43 - Breakout (PSX, 2000): Demented Ducks

52:19 - Breakout (PSX, 2000): Henvaders

58:57 - Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders: Title Theme

1:08:47 - Yellow Magic Orchestra: Computer Game "Theme from The Circus" | Breakout 2000 (1996, Jaguar): Title Theme

1:20:47 - Alleyway: Bonus Theme

1:29:11 - Arkanoid DS: Fairy Reflection

Closing - Breakout (PSX, 2000): Puzzle Pipe

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Comments

Branwen Shoop

Alex Kidd BMX does use the Sega paddle! Also Megumi Rescue, Galactic Protector and secretly Out Run.

Julian

My earlier comment seems to have mysteriously disappeared, so I'll try again... Really excellent episode, Jeremy and Kevin! I thoroughly enjoyed it. To add a little additional color about the TTL chip discussion: the 74 series chips being discussed mostly provided fixed Boolean digital logic functions on their pins. For example, 3 of the pins on a given chip might constitute the 2 inputs and 1 output of an "OR" gate, where the output produces a positive voltage (logic "true") if at least one of the two inputs has a positive voltage (logic "true"). Otherwise, the output is grounded (logic "false"). Different TTL chips provide different functions, like AND, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, etc.; and a designer wires them together in specific ways to create the desired digital circuit. There are also chips for other elements, like memories. More modern designs use processors to execute code, which is of course much more efficient. But at the lowest level, code really just ends up controlling digital circuits anyway. For example, the code "if (a == true or b == true) then c = true; else c = false" would describe what that "OR" gate from above does; or, more to the point, the code could be "c = a or b". So, we can think of executed code as a kind of abstraction or simplification of what those TTL chips did. Considering everything that a Breakout game needs to do -- the input, the game logic, the display, sound, etc. -- it's very, very impressive to think of everything being done in 100 to 200 TTL chips, since most of those chips didn't do very much individually! As an aside, the reason that logic-based games can map so well to FPGA designs such as MiSTer cores is because FPGAs themselves are organized into look-up tables that ideally implement the Boolean logic functions. You can think of an FPGA as a modern-day blank canvas of a huge number of the logic gates that TTL chips implemented in such limited quantities.

John Simon

Never drew the line between Breakout and Exidy/Taito Circus Really quite disturbing sound effects in the game when the clowns due. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9w-yc_d1q8 Friend of a friend gave me a bunch of 2600 games because he got an NES and one of these was the 2600 port of Circus from ninteen-dickety-seventy-eight. Looked incredibly primitive next to other games like pacman jr, Pitfall II, Chopper Command, etc. - Also without any context, this thing looks completely insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud-fI2bg_M8 Probably my first Breakout game was the arcade version of Arkanoid 2, which I still think has an incredibly slick presentation, glowing blocks, bright pingy sound effects, lots of variation in stages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1E15FOYmKc

pochepiller

Alex Smith of They Creates World did a lot of research about EM games. He got the answer of the question you asked in this podcast.