A classic that holds up. Like the earlier Breakout,
Super Breakout is a simple concept that gets quite
challenging—keep the ball in play while knocking
all the bricks away. As the game progresses the ball increases
in speed, and when you hit the top, your paddle becomes
half as big.
Super Breakout improves on the original in several
areas. The graphics, while simple, are more refined. The
control is tighter as well, and offers a smoother difficulty
curve. The sound has improved the most, and may be one
of the earliest examples of situational music in a game.
When the ball hits a brick, you'll hear a series of notes
based on the number of points the brick is worth. As the
game gets more frenzied and multiples of bricks get hit,
the "music" really gets going. As an added bonus,
you can continue to hit the "game reset" switch
before starting play to select the type of sound you want
the bricks to make.
The game variations in the game are much better than in
the original Breakout. Breakout, Double, and Cavity
are all just different enough to fun and challenging in
their own right. However, Progressive is my favorite and
is almost a new game in itself.
Rather than have a static wall of bricks to remove, the
bricks slowly start to move towards the paddle. At first
they move occasionally, but if you can keep the ball in
play they eventually move down everytime the ball hits
the paddle! This causes the board to change quickly and
makes keeping the ball in play very difficult, but also
brings out more of the high scoring red and blue bricks—if
you can get to them.
Super Breakout, while very similar to Breakout,
has the right mix of challenging and additive gameplay
that the original lacks. While not one of my absolute
favorites, it is one of the cornerstones of the Atari
library and comes highly recommended.
2008 ben langberg, all rights reserved.