but Breakout was developed by Steve Jobs right?

cspacefan

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Okay I'm probably entering a world of pain by asking this question, but here goes.

I was reading this article on Ars Technica about Steve Jobs being ticked off when Apple lost Bungie to Microsoft...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...ision-led-to-lost-opportunities-for-apple.ars
(sweet Photoshop of the Atari joystick in his hand by the way)

... and the general tone by Ed Fries and John Carmack is that Steve Jobs was just never a gamer and always thought they were a waste of time.
But didn't he and Woz make Breakout? I'm sure Woz did practically the whole thing, certainly not disputing that, but wasn't Steve Jobs even slightly a gamer back in his early days?
 
If I remember my Atari lore correctly, the only real involvement in Breakout that Jobs had was as the middleman between Atari and Wozniak who pocketed Woz's half of the bonus. :)
 
If I remember my Atari lore correctly, the only real involvement in Breakout that Jobs had was as the middleman between Atari and Wozniak who pocketed Woz's half of the bonus. :)

Yeah, I was thinking he was the same back then as he is now. Just about the business and making benjamins. I'm guessing he couldn't care less for games. The new "Game Center" for iphone/ipod was probably someone else's idea as well.
 
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I thought Steve Jobs only had involvement with Super Breakout when it came to getting the game code on as few ICs as possible...(I could be totally wrong though).
 
Pretty sure he worked at Atari before the Breakout thing, apparently to raise money for a trip to India.
But yeah the whole story about breakout apparently is true, but ultimately they could not use Woz's design either because it was too complex to duplicate on an assembly line or I've also heard that nobody could understand how it worked. How much is truth, and how much is legend, who really knows?
 
Here's the story that I had always understood to be true:

Steve Jobs did side projects for Atari and was asked to design the hardware for Breakout to use fewer parts, and was offered a $100 bonus for every chip he could eliminate from the board, in addition to the $x000 from the work itself.

Steve brings the problem to Woz, who works day and night to simplify and parts-reduce the game, producing a perfect working version using something like 30 fewer chips.

Steve Jobs takes Woz's design to Atari, who pays him the $x000 plus $3000 bonus for reducing the chip cound so much.

He then "splits" the payoff with Woz, giving him half the $x000, but keeping the $3000 bonus that he never told Woz about.


And, after all that, the Atari Breakout that was produced didn't even use Woz's design. Apparently it was too complicate for them to figure out, so it grew in parts count in the lab before it was produced.

Also, Woz didn't invent the game itself - he just designed the hardware. I think somene else at Atari came up with idea and gameplay.

Of course, this is all stuff I've read - so no guarantee that it's 100% fact.

-Ian
 
I thought Steve Jobs only had involvement with Super Breakout when it came to getting the game code on as few ICs as possible...(I could be totally wrong though).

It's breakout... and there is no game code... it's an all TTL design, and the challenge was to design the hardware with as few chips as possible.
 
I was told that this game below is a Breakout? I can't find where it says that anywhere and it's been converted to a poker game. Anyone have any idea if it was a Breakout?
 

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I was told that this game below is a Breakout? I can't find where it says that anywhere and it's been converted to a poker game. Anyone have any idea if it was a Breakout?

Definitely not a breakout or super breakout PCB, big maybe on the cab.. could be a pong clone.
 
also, from what i read in a couple of the video game history books, the way woz found out was from nolan bushnell, who asked him what he did with his share of however much the money was, and woz freaked out. it also said that point was the beginning of the end of woz and jobs' friendship.
 
Author Stephen Kent set the record straight on this story in a book that he wrote about the early days of the video game industry, but most of the points from the story mentioned here seems to be pretty accurate. I think that Woz actually cried, supposedly MANY years later, when he heard what Jobs had done...
 
Author Stephen Kent set the record straight on this story in a book that he wrote about the early days of the video game industry, but most of the points from the story mentioned here seems to be pretty accurate. I think that Woz actually cried, supposedly MANY years later, when he heard what Jobs had done...

Unfortunately, a lot of material in Kent's book is not fully accurate. Things like Atari Coin's area being connected to the Atari Inc. headquarters just was completely off. And in this case I wouldn't call it completely setting the record straight regarding Breakout.

I went directly to Al Alcorn and Steve Bristow regarding what happened for this article here:

http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=395
 
Damn I remember playing my Power Mac 6400 Marathon and Myth were some of my favorite games. I also played fallout on the Mac first. Lack of games is why Ive been a PC gamer since I could afford my own hardware.
 
Jobs' worked on Touch Me to some extent. I think I remember seeing his signature on the schematics.
 
Unfortunately, a lot of material in Kent's book is not fully accurate. Things like Atari Coin's area being connected to the Atari Inc. headquarters just was completely off. And in this case I wouldn't call it completely setting the record straight regarding Breakout.

I went directly to Al Alcorn and Steve Bristow regarding what happened for this article here:

http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=395

That is essentially the story I got from Woz at a bar in San Jose. He was at a conference pitching his toys from his Cloud9 venture. I do think he was a little less dispassionate than the authors of the article made him ut to be when talking about the bonuses he got screwed over on, but then he laughed and said it really didn't matter now, he would have just blown the bonus on more chips or some piece of test equipment.

ken
 
I do think he was a little less dispassionate than the authors of the article made him ut to be when talking about the bonuses he got screwed over on, but then he laughed and said it really didn't matter now, he would have just blown the bonus on more chips or some piece of test equipment.

ken

As stated, I'm the author of the article I posted the link to. I'm not sure what you're referring to about making it seem passionate though, any quotes are Woz's own.
 
As stated, I'm the author of the article I posted the link to. I'm not sure what you're referring to about making it seem passionate though, any quotes are Woz's own.

When I was talking with him, he got a little worked up about it, then seemed to realize how silly it was to be worried about such a small amount of money given that he was a multi-millionaire at the time (hopefully he still is).

Both times that I met Woz, he was a mice guy. Both times I met Steve J. he was a d*ck! So I guess it is true, nice guys do finish last.

ken
 
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