Super Breakout

Super Breakout is an action game originally released in arcades in 1978 by Atari and later ported to home computers and game consoles. It is the sequel to Breakout and features the same style of gameplay while adding some new game variations. As in Breakout, the game screen consists of layers of bricks at the top with a paddle at the bottom that players control. The goal is to destroy all of the bricks by deflecting a bouncing ball into them using the paddle. If the ball is missed and falls off of the bottom of the screen, it is lost. The game ends when all of the allotted balls are lost. Once all bricks have been destroyed, the game repeats.

Super Breakout includes four different game variations:

• Breakout:
  This variation plays the same as the orginal game. Players have a single paddle with a single ball in play. The playfield has 8 rows of bricks along the top of the screen.
• Double:
  In this variation players control two paddles at the same time, one above the other. At the start of each turn two balls are served. If one is missed, players continue the turn with the remaining ball. The same brick layout from Breakout is used where there are 8 rows of bricks along the top of the screen.
• Cavity:
  As in Double, players control two paddles at the same time, one above the other. However, only ball is served while an additional two are trapped within the layers of bricks. Once enough bricks are destroyed, the additional two balls are released making it possible for the player to have up to three balls in play at one time. The playfield features 8 rows of bricks similiar to previous variations, however several bricks are missing to accomodate the two trapped balls.
• Progressive:
  In this game variation, players again control only one paddle. The playfield has 8 layers of bricks, however there is a gap in the middle between rows 4 and 5. As the game progresses and speeds up, new layers of bricks appear at the top of the screen and push all other layers down. It is not possible to fully clear the screen of bricks in this variation as new bricks will continuously appear.

In all game variations, when the ball hits the top of the screen the paddles will be reduced in size until the ball is lost at which point it will be reset to normal.

Points are earned each time a brick is hit. Depending on the color of the brick, either 1, 3, 5, or 7 points are earned. In most game variations, bricks higher on the screen are worth more points; in the progressive variation, the bricks cycle through all four colors as new bricks appear.

When the ball is first served, it will be moving slowly. When it destroys bricks of higher point values, it will speed up. The higher the point value, the faster the ball moves. The ball will remain at higher speeds until it is lost.

Some versions of the game have some minor graphical variations due to hardware limitations. The original arcade game used a black & white monitor; color was simulated with colored overlays on the monitor to make certain rows of bricks appear different colors. Because of this, the point values for bricks may not correspond with the color they appear. On the Atari 2600 version, each brick in a row had no visible breaks between them and neighboring bricks, making the row initially appear as a single solid line.