Atari’s 1976 arcade game Breakout begins with a wall made of eight rows of colored bricks. The player moves a paddle horizontally along the bottom of the screen and bounces a ball into the wall, removing bricks on contact.
The brick wall is arranged in colored bands, with different rows awarding different point values. The ball’s angle changes when it hits the paddle, walls, or bricks, so keeping the ball in play becomes increasingly difficult as the formation is cleared. The basic design grew from the paddle-and-ball concept established by Pong.
Breakout was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, with engineering work by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs on an early prototype. The game was released by Atari in 1976. Later versions and clones used different layouts, which explains why memories of the number of rows can vary; the original arcade Breakout uses eight.