An Offer and a Deadline
In 1975, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell offered Steve Jobs $750 to build a prototype for a new arcade game—Breakout—with a bonus for using fewer than 50 logic chips. Jobs accepted and enlisted Steve Wozniak, who compressed the design into 44 chips over four sleepless nights.
A Secret Bonus
Jobs promised to split the pay, but didn’t tell Wozniak he received a $5,000 bonus. Wozniak, believing the bonus was just a few hundred dollars, received only $350. The prototype worked but was too compact for mass production, so Atari redesigned it.
Breakout’s Influence on Apple
The experience left a mark. Wozniak later said designing Breakout directly inspired technical features in the Apple II, including color graphics, game paddle support, and sound. He even wrote a software version, Brick Out, in Integer BASIC to demo the computer’s capabilities.
From Bricks to Business
Wozniak and Jobs, along with Ronald Wayne, founded Apple in 1976. Breakout’s influence lived on—inside the circuits, interfaces, and even the vision of the Apple II. The arcade game helped define the hardware that would shape the personal computing era.
In 1975, Steve Jobs was given four days to help build a new arcade game for Atari called Breakout.
He brought in Steve Wozniak to design a compact circuit.
What followed was a sleepless sprint, a secret bonus, and a game that would end up shaping early Apple hardware…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/Qlb60iGyD3
— Detective Tiger's Stories (@TigerDetective) May 12, 2025