Breakout

If Pong was a simulation of Table Tennis, then Breakout is a simulation of Squash—or could have been. While it is quite concievable to just have the paddle and the ball, Nolan Bushnell chose to add the famous bricks, thereby forging, as William Cassidy points out in his interesting article, an alliance between destruction and video games that remains till today.

Looking back after more than three decades, Breakout is indeed one of the most successful concepts of video game history, but it is interesting that its influence really began only when it was revived in 1986 by Arkanoid. There are hardly any pre-Arkanoid Breakout clones at all!

Breakout Games for DOS
Aquanoid	Ark…	Bananoid	Bat 'n Ball
BipBop II	BreakIn	Bricks	Brixor II
Cybersphere	Cybersphere Plus	EGAWalls	Electranoid
Krypton Egg	Popcorn	Powball	Stonebreaker
Tronic	Wallgame	YABOG	Zong
Breakout Games for Windows
Block Breaker 1.2	Block Breaker 4.0	Bricks	Bustout!
Crazy Crack	Krypton Egg	TZ-Breakout	WallBall

Arcade Machines

• Wall Crash (Midcoin, 1984)
• Arkanoid (Taito, 1986)
• Tournament Arkanoid (Taito, 1986)
• Gigas (Sega, 1986)
• Gigas Mark II (Sega, 1986)
• Riddle of Pythagoras (Sega, 1986)
• Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh (Taito, 1987)
• Goindol (Sun A, 1987)
• Mahjong Block Jongbou (SNK, 1987)
• Quester (Namco, 1987)
• Thunder & Lightning (Seta, 1990)
• Playgirls (Hot-B, 1992)
• Blocken (Visco, 1994)
• Wiggie Waggie (Promat, 1994)
• Bal Cube (Metro, 1996)
• Domino Block (Wonwoo, 1996)
• Arkanoid Returns (Taito, 1997)
• Gunbarich (Psikyo, 2001)