The mechanic that launched a thousand games

The Pong game mechanic is so simple and so effective that its impact can be felt far and wide throughout the annals of video game history.

From Pong, we get Breakout. The innovation here is to turn Pong into a single-player game like real-world handball or squash, with the addition of a breakable brick wall. Breakout introduces stages or levels to the Pong concept, each with a different configuration of bricks:

Arkanoid iterates on Breakout by changing the skin to a sci-fi theme. The paddle becomes a spaceship. Arkanoid adds a few new features, most importantly power-ups that come in the form of capsules that are released when the ball smashes into the bricks. When the player catches the capsules with the spaceship, the game rules get bent. The spaceship can become longer. It can become sticky so that the player can catch the ball and plan the next shot. My favorite Arkanoid power-up is the red capsule marked L; it enables the spaceship to fire...