#3: Breakout (1976, Atari)

Steve Jobs was a man who did a lot to revolutionize technology. He turned Apple into a multinational juggernaut, crushing all comers with its line of sleek, stylish iDevices. The modern view of tech as an integral part of modern life is in no small part thanks to Jobs' work. Frankly, the world as we know it owes Jobs quite a bit.

One of Jobs' accomplishments that isn't as well known as the iRevolution did quite a bit to change the face of gaming as well. In 1975 Cyan Engineering hired Jobs to produce the prototype for Breakout, a game conceived as Pong for a single player. Long story short, Pong went on to inspire all manner of other games. Notably, Taito's Arkanoid, which we'll be covering later once we reach the 1980s, owes its existence to Breakout. In the modern era the most well known variation of the game is Sidhe Interactive's Shatter, which takes the concept into the modern era with HD graphics and sound and updated gameplay (we'll also be covering Shatter...sometime in 2015 at this rate.)

For this entry I used MAME to emulate Super Breakout, which is identical to the original game but uses a traditional microprocessor setup instead of an archaic discrete logic system.