Breakout for the Atari 2600, released in 1978, is an arcade-style video game where players control a paddle at the bottom of the screen to bounce a ball and break a wall of colored bricks above. The objective is to clear the entire wall of bricks without letting the ball pass the paddle. Points are scored for each brick broken, with different colors typically representing varying point values. The game increases in difficulty as the ball picks up speed. Breakout falls under the 'bat-and-ball' genre, which is considered an early form of the block-breaking subgenre in video games. Its simple, addictive gameplay has influenced countless other games in the genre.