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Super BreakoutOriginal System: Atari 400/800
Super Breakout was the pack-in game with early Atari 5200 units until Pac-Man replaced it in late 1983. While not a bad game, Super Breakout hardly showed off any of the systems power and is quite weak graphically. About the only thing Super Breakout excels at is making use of all four controller ports (although not at the same time). In fact Super Breakout is only one of three games that utilized ports three and four. Of the other two, RealSports Tennis had its four player mode hidden and Asteroids was never released. Sufficient to say that there wasn't a lot of crazy four player action going on in the 5200 world. Rumor has it that Atari originally wanted to make Asteroids (CX-5201) the pack-in game but switched to Super Breakout when Asteroids proved to be unplayable with the 5200 controllers.The Atari 5200 port of Super Breakout has been slightly enhanced over the original 400/800 port. First, there's now a short little tune that plays at the start of each players turn and some new sounds for the ball hitting the bricks, wall, and paddle. Second, the bricks now have a melting animation when hit instead of just disappearing. Third, the copyright has been updated from 1979 to 1982. This is somewhat unusual since the copyright notice was taken out of most early 400/800 to 5200 ports due to the 5200 having its own separate splash screen. Finally almost all the colors have been changed. In the original Atari 400/800 version the boarder is blue/green the text is orange/brown, the paddle is purple, and the bricks (going from top to bottom) are blue, green, red/purple, and dull orange). In the 5200 port the boarder, text, and paddle are all a light gray color and the bricks are green, blue, orange, and yellow. Interestingly the color of the players score turns red when it's their turn while it stays grey in the 5200 port. The Atari 4000/800 does have one advantage over the 5200 port in that it could support up two EIGHT players. This is because the original used paddle controllers which allowed two players per port. The Atari 5200 port is limited to four players. The Atari 400/800 version also has an easter egg which is activated by pressing Shift+Control+L. This easter egg isn't accessible in the 5200 version due to a lack of a keyboard.
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