Atari’s side-scrolling Breakout reboot arrives on March 25

Proving that truly no IP is safe from modern reboot culture, Atari’s Breakout is back. The upcoming version of the simple 1976 brick-smashing hit rotates the playing field by 90 degrees and adds auto-scrolling, neon effects, power-ups and local co-op. In other words, Breakout Beyond is the Tetris Effect formula applied to the Led Zeppelin-era arcade classic.<br /> The original Breakout was a product of dramatically more limited 1970s hardware, but its simplicity was part of its magic. Rows of bricks sat up top, a player-controlled paddle lived down below and a “ball” (actually a square, thanks to ‘70s graphics) bounced in between. Move paddle, hit ball, smash bricks, wow bellbottom-wearing arcadegoers.<br /> The core formula — moving a paddle to bounce projectiles aga [...]