Super Breakout Review

In the beginning, there was Breakout. But Atari knew they could do better, so they also released Super Breakout. Super Breakout is an improvement over Breakout in every way imaginable, and is a game well worth a place in the collection of anybody who plays Atari 2600 games.

The concept of Super Breakout is simple. There are lines of blocks at the top of the screen. You have a paddle at the bottom of a screen. A ball travels through the screen, hitting the blocks one at a time and destroying them. After each hit, it travels back to the bottom of the screen where you must maneuver the paddle so that the ball bounces off of it. That’s about all there is to the game. You continue until you have let all of your balls fall past the paddle.

Aesthetically, Super Breakout is a step above its predecessor. The bricks to be removed are composed of smaller lines, and the area of the screen to be played in is also smaller, with there being side areas of the screen that aren’t used in the game. The colors of the lines of bricks are a lot nicer and prettier than in Breakout also. On the sound front, the sound effects from when bricks are removed are also better, more creative, and more diverse so they don’t get old as fast. Overall, this game is pretty good aesthetically.

In terms of gameplay, this game controls excellently with the paddle controller. Unfortunately, you need a paddle controller to play this game, and many people don’t have them. But the paddle controller is capable of fast movements or slow ones depending on how fast you turn the knob, and this allows for very precise movements after some time of practicing with it. This all means that if a ball falls past your paddle, you can’t blame the controls.

At the same time, however, the ball moves depending on how you hit it with the paddle. It will move depending on what part of the paddle it hits as well as how fast the paddle is moving at that time. This means that, if you know what you’re doing, you can keep the balls moving reasonably slowly, although they seem to speed up slightly over time no matter what you do. However, the ball never seems to move as fast as its fastest speeds in Breakout, making the game significantly more manageable. Also, the ball won’t ever bounce around among the blocks. It will hit one and then come back down, even if it has to travel straight through another block to do so (I’m not kidding, I saw this happen).

This game is fun enough that it is worth playing more just to see how far you can get into clearing the blocks. Thus, I heavily recommend that anybody who owns both an Atari 2600 and a paddle controller get this game. Actually, if you don’t own a paddle controller, it’s worth the time to hunt one down for this game. They’re not that expensive anymore. The conclusion, therefore, is quite simple: get this game.