Breakout - Personal Computer World - BBC Micro - Emulated, BeebEm - 244 points

Breakout is a version of the classic arcade game. This version for the BBC Micro appeared as a type-in listing in the June 1982 issue of Personal Computer World magazine. The program was written by R. Trevellyan.
Everyone knows this game (surely?). Destroy the wall by bouncing balls off it using your bat. Let a ball escape and you lose a life. Destroy enough of the wall and you get a new one to destroy. You do not need to destroy all the blocks in this version before moving on to the next level.
Being from 1982, this is quite an early type-in for the BBC Micro, the machine not beginning to leave production until early in 1982. It is a very colourful game and the speed of play is quite fast. The wall itself is drawn very quickly (almost instantly), as this part of the program is in machine-code. The graphics are just parts of the standard character set, with your bat being just five minus signs in a row. You won't have time to notice the lack of graphical finesse however as you will be too busy chasing the ball. There is also no in game score shown, so you will have to wait till the game ends to see how well you did.
Overall impressions:
Early, simple, short to type in, fast to play! Quite suitable for a magazine type-in from the first half of 1982, with the machine itself being released for less than 6 months at the time. Despite its simplicity, a user would have got several games worth of entertainment out of this after typing it in.
This run was made on the 3rd July 2024 using the BeebEm emulator on PC. The final score was 244.
Time stamps:
00:30 Game loading and instructions.
00:37 Game start
01:17 First life lost.
01:20 Second life lost.
03:35 First wall completed.
04:12 Third life lost.
05:07 Fourth life lost.
07:24 Second wall completed.
07:40 Fifth life lost. Game Over! Final score 244 points.
Intro Music:
Music by: Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
Title: Legend
/ @whitebataudio