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Google Celebrates the 37th Anniversary of Atari's Breakout (google.com)
97 points by fintler on May 13, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 19 comments



Why can't anyone making a breakout clone get the physics "right"? In the original[1], the ball bounces vertically off of the first brick it encounters and continues through all of the others until it hits the paddle or the ceiling; this changes the feel of the game substantially and makes the ball more predictable, which lets the entire game run at a faster pace.

[1] I don't really know about the original, but I am quite familiar with the Atari 400/800 Super Breakout cartridge.


Looks like google needs to watch this video on how to make a good breakout game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v... -- Juice it or Lose it.


Google thanks for scaring the shit out of my cat.

Note to others who've not clicked the link yet: check your volume before you do.


The ___location of the URL for this post can also be reached by going to http://images.google.com/ and performing a search for "atari breakout".


Interestingly, if you beat the game it repeats but with a search for "Galápagos Islands". Is this a reference to something?


I got "Tokyo" for the next level, then some place not heard of followed by two dog search's. Would appear to be somewhat random/based upon what people are searching for maybe.


I got Eggs Benedict.... which is hands down my favorite food. I got that 'how do they know!!!' feeling... until i played for the second time :\


Wozniak's Breakout in Apple Basic using the low-res graphics mode and the paddles was really short; it could fit on a T-shirt if I correctly recall the screenshots I saw.


If you beat the "Atari Breakout" level the search term switches to "great white shark". Anyone know what the next levels are?


It seems to be random; I got a breed of dog after finishing the initial level.


Here is a list of all the possible words: https://gist.github.com/makepanic/5573934 I got it from the js source.


Same here, mine was "golden retriever".


yip, got "pugs" some other dog type, after 6 levels my hope of porn was deminished and I gave up.


Reminds me of the time back in the '80s, I had a day to kill so I made a breakout game in Z80 assembly. That was fun.


Mini Show HN that is kinda cringeworthy:

Those that want to see some of my novel ideas with breakout, see my unfinished game, that probably will remain unfinished (as I focus on my startup) please visit http://paddlewars.agfgames.com (yes, the site is horrible, but the game is good... or at least half of its players love it... I know that the other half hate it but half of them love it!!!)

EDIT: Random trivia: Breakout game design was done by Steve Wozniak, mostly because when Steve Jobs recruited him to do the electronics, he forgot (or "forgot" we will never know) to explain him the rules in detail, so he had to invent them.



It's good to see that they've found something useful to do with the resources previously committed to Reader.


It's too slow in my Firefox to be usable, unfortunately.


I wonder if they will give me back the photos and other stuff I lost when they cut me down to 6gb and not charging my card. Lol that would be sweet but it's good to hear I like to clean my email out a lot.




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