Breakout: Recharged

Breakout begins with eight rows of bricks, with two rows each of a different color. The color order from the bottom up is yellow, green, orange, and red. Using a single ball, the player must knock down as many bricks as possible by using the walls and the paddle below to bounce the ball against the bricks and eliminate them. If the player's paddle misses the ball's rebound, they lose a turn.

The player has three turns to clear two screens of bricks. Yellow bricks earn one point each, green bricks earn three points, orange bricks earn five points, and the top-level red bricks score seven points each. The paddle shrinks to one-half its initial size after the ball breaks through the red row and makes contact with the upper wall. Ball speed increases at specific intervals: after four hits, after twelve hits, and after making contact with the orange and red rows.

A precursor to Breakout was Clean Sweep, released by Ramtek in 1974. In that game, the player uses a paddle to hit a ball up towards a playfield of dots, which disappear as the ball moves through them; the goal is to achieve a clean sweep by erasing all the dots on screen. Clean Sweep became one of the top ten best-selling arcade video games of 1974 and sold a total of 3,500 arcade cabinets.

Breakout, a discrete logic (non-microprocessor) video game, was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, both of whom were involved with Atari and its Kee Games subsidiary. Atari produced innovative video games using modified Pong hardware as a means of competition against companies manufacturing unlicensed "Pong clones". Bushnell wanted to adapt the gameplay of Pong into a single-player experience where the player uses a paddle to sustain a bouncing ball that depletes a wall of bricks. Bushnell was certain the game would be popular, and he and Bristow partnered to produce a concept.

In October 1976, the annual RePlay industry revenue chart listed Breakout as the fifth highest-earning arcade video game of 1976 in the United States, below Midway Manufacturing's Sea Wolf, Gun Fight, and Wheels, and Atari's own multi-player game Indy 800. Breakout was later the third highest-earning arcade video game of 1977 in the United States, trailing only Sea Wolf and Sprint 2, and remained the fifth highest-earning arcade video game of 1978 in the US. Throughout its original arcade production run, Atari manufactured a total of 11,000 dedicated cabinets.

Breakout was also a commercial success in Japan under its publishing partnership with Namco. On the first annual Game Machine arcade revenue chart, Breakout ranked as the fourth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1976 in Japan, behind Taito's Ball Park (Tornado Baseball) and Speed Race DX, and Sega's Heavyweight Champ. The following year, Breakout was Japan's third highest-grossing arcade game of 1977, behind two racing games: Namco's electro-mechanical driving game F-1 and Taito's Speed Race DX.

Breakout spawned an extensive genre of clones. Ten years after its arcade release, the block-breaking concept gained renewed popularity with Taito's 1986 game Arkanoid, which introduced power-ups and distinct enemies and led to numerous imitators. In Japan, this genre became known as block kuzushi ("block breaker") games. Designer Tomohiro Nishikado cited Breakout as an inspiration behind his 1978 arcade shooting game Space Invaders. Nishikado stated that he wished to adapt the game's sense of pacing and achievement derived from destroying targets one by one into a defensive shooting game.

Breakout also influenced Wozniak's engineering design for the Apple II computer. Wozniak later remarked: "A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designed Breakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it in software now."