Atari Breakout: How to unlock the latest Google easter egg

First released in 1976, Atari Breakout is finally getting the Google easter egg it has long deserved. 

|
Google
The new 'Atari Breakout' easter egg is an homage to one of the first great arcade games.

In 1976, Atari released Breakout, an arcade game with a very simple premise: Using a pixelated paddle, gamers bashed a pixelated ball at a wall of pixelated bricks. If you knocked apart enough bricks, you won. Missed the ricocheting ball, and you lost. The whole thing was based loosely on the Pong concept – Pong, of course, was two-player – and it was extremely popular. In fact, Breakout was Atari's most popular game, at least until Asteroids arrived in '79. 

And now, on its 37th birthday, Atari Breakout – that pioneering video game title – is getting a Google tribute. Or, more accurately, it's finally getting the easter egg it deserves.

Here's how it works: Navigate over to Google Image Search. Type in the phrase "Atari Breakout." Within a couple of seconds, the screen will transform into a slightly modified (see above) version of the familiar Breakout set-up. 

The easter egg will even keep track of your score for you, and provide you with a link so you can share your best numbers with pals. Our own high score is not worth speaking of here – it is embarrassingly low – but we've perused Twitter, and we've seen some scores in the 600s, and the 700s, and even one right up around 2000. To which we say: We admire your commitment, dear gamer. 

Bonus fact: one of the men originally tasked with developing an early version of Breakout was Atari employee (and future Apple chief) Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs subsequently handed off the project to his pal (and future Apple co-founder) Steve Wozniak. Jobs had promised to split the $700 fee with Wozniak, which he did. But he hung onto the $5,000 early-finish bonus for himself – he'd neglected to tell Mr. Wozniak about that part. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Atari Breakout: How to unlock the latest Google easter egg
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0514/Atari-Breakout-How-to-unlock-the-latest-Google-easter-egg
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe