back to article Google adds Atari Easter Egg for Breakout's birthday

Google has added a playable version of the early Atari game Breakout to its Image Search system to celebrate the game's 37th birthday. To access the game go to the Google Image search page and enter "Atari breakout." The search results pages then form into five rows of bricks and the paddle and ball game commences under mouse …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Addiction broken

    My 1979 Apple ][ was my first proper home computer that wasn't a bare board kit. It even had a 100kbyte floppy disk. Cost about £6k in today's money -on the last day of 8% vat - and I couldn't afford colour.

    Played the "Brick" game until about 4am to clear the screen. Have never played another computer game seriously since then. The Apple ][ then did long service as a controller for various hardware systems via the prototyping boards.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Addiction broken

      Just revisited it for old times sake. Cleared all the bricks on the second game. Not bad after 30 years lay-off.

      No motivation to see how big a score I could make after 500.

    2. deshepherd

      Re: Addiction broken

      We had an Apple ][ in the school computer lab .... main machines were RM-380Z's. From recollection the only use for the Apple ][ was playing "little brickout" (and for serious gaming we had a space invaders machine!)

      1. Steven Raith
        Thumb Up

        Re: Addiction broken

        We had LCIIIs and Performas in our high school computing labs.

        Suffice to say a lot of time was spent playing this when we should have been working.

        Still got an A though, arf.

        Steven R

  2. Eddy Ito

    AH HA!

    Now it all falls into place. All MS needs to do is add a paddle and ball to the W8 TIFKAM screen so users can "Breakout" into the desktop. Double points for hitting a spinning live tile. Now then Mr. Balmer, for my saving Windows 8 and all the associated R&D costs please send a bank check made out for five million dollars payable to Robert Edward Ito. Thank you.

    1. Thomas 4

      Re: AH HA!

      This...would actually get me to upgrade to Windows 8. oO

    2. Shrimpling
      Headmaster

      Re: AH HA!

      "please send a bank check made out for five million dollars payable to Robert Edward Ito"

      If it has a payee and a value on it then its not a blank cheque.

      1. mccp
        FAIL

        Re: Re: AH HA!

        bank check != blank cheque

        Doh.

        1. Shrimpling
          FAIL

          Re: AH HA!

          Me Fail English? That's unpossible.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Boo. Doesn't work on Opera.

    EPIC GOOGLE JAVASCRIPT COMPATIBILITY FAIL!!!

    1. asdf
      Trollface

      duh

      Few people test against browsers whose market share rounds down to zero.

    2. Steve Foster
      Boffin

      @AC

      Does too.

      EPIC AC FAIL!

    3. gujiguju

      Works fine here, using Opera for OSX.

      Mind boggling to the think where we've come since Breakout was first released (as if remembering horse-drawn carriages and now watching the moon landings). Astounding advances (in wasting time). ;)

    4. Sloppy Crapmonster
      Thumb Up

      It works just fine for me in Opera 12.15 for Debian 7.0. And this is my "give google as few permissions as possible" browser!

  4. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Brings back memories

    I wrote a version of this for the BBC B, then a super-dooper one for the Archimedes, that did proper vector calculations and you could apply spin to the balls by 'swiping' the bat as they met. It also had 'soft' bricks that would slow the ball down and 'shiny' ones that sped it up.

  5. LinkOfHyrule
    Joke

    I bet Steve was pissed off that they couldn't give the bricks rounded corners using so few chips!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, but he insisted the chips themselves have rounded corners. ;-)

  6. Daniel B.

    Hehe

    This game I came to know under the name of "Brickles 4.0"... and it was on a Mac+. Even though I know all the Atari Breakout story or "How Jobs cheated Woz out of the big prize", I had never seen the actual game 'till today. So it is Brickles daddy!

  7. Frumious Bandersnatch

    Is this a not-so-subtle dig...

    at Apple trying to patent "bounce-back" in user interfaces ("on a mobile device")?

  8. Richard Wharram

    And in a kick in the teeth for Jobs' memory...

    ...it doesn't work on the iPhone.

    I spent a good 5 minutes trying to work out why my twitter feed was filling up with tweets telling me to image search atari breakout. I scrolled up and down the images wondering if one was rude or something.

    Be more specific people!

    Anyone remember Through The Wall on the Speccy demo tape?

    1. Tim Walker
      Linux

      "Through The Wall"?

      I must have whiled away a fair chunk of the Christmas morning when I got my Speccy, just playing Through The Wall... just the novelty of playing a game like that on our home telly was enough!

      Thirty years later, I recreated the experience with my then-new Raspberry Pi: plugged it into our TV, installed a Speccy emulator, found a snapshot file of the demo tape, loaded up Through The Wall...

      You know, Reg, you really should add an "air soggy with nostalgia" ((c) Tom Lehrer) icon on here ;-)

    2. turkey
      Devil

      Re: And in a kick in the teeth for Jobs' memory...

      >> Be more specific people!

      It's hard to be specific in 140 characters, or if you have twitter-induced ADD.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    the illusion of color was added with strips of colored cellophane.

    Hehehe, i had a stick on green plastic sheet that attached to my TV by static that gave me a green screen monitor for my zx81. I believe there was an orange one too...

    heheheh, those were the days......How i want them back.....

  10. lglethal Silver badge
    Devil

    Curse you El Reg

    There goes my productivity for today!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not fair

    The screen 'auto-fits' and so if you use a netbook you don't get anywhere near as much space as you do in your image. Not that it shouldn't autofit, but it is harder on a netbook as aresult.

    Still fun though.

  12. stephajn
    Paris Hilton

    Jobs Icon anyone?

    I think we need a Jobs icon for all of the stories and posts that inevitably lead back to Steve Jobs.

    I swear we hear more about that guy in death than we did in his life! </hyperbole>

    Paris...because I am sure we could link this back to her in some way too.

  13. Herby

    Outsourcing?

    So Mr. Jobs outsourced his job. Looks like he learned business pretty early in his life.

    Of course, it would be interesting to see a schematic of the 40+ chip solution to ponder just how it works.

    Yes, I do like to program in "solder". I find it amazing how few people understand any facet of the language!

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