 "Search for Atari Breakout in Google Images and get a quirky surprise")
Google, over the years, has always shown us its quirky side. This time around it has developed an excellent Easter egg that lets you play one of the best-loved arcade games, Breakout.
Commemorating the game 37 years after its conceptualisation, the Easter egg allows users break as many “bricks” as they can using the direction keys. You can access the game by typing “atari breakout” into Google Image Search on PC or mobile. The Easter egg uses images in the search results as blocks which users have to clear using the ball and paddle. If you clear a few levels, the images generated start getting more and more random, with pancakes and chinchillas just a few of the offerings. The controls are a bit wonky on smartphones as the search page renders differently.
Google lets you play Breakout with its Image Search
Breakout is a simple game that has the top half of the screen crammed with bricks. Users will have to bounce a ball around the screen in order to hit as many bricks as they can. Once hit, the bricks explode and the user has to ensure that the ball does not fall off the paddle. The paddle can be controlled using either the arrow keys in your PC, or number keys in case of a mobile phone (depending on what you are using). This is how you can get to the Easter egg using the image search.
This is not the first Easter egg that the company has slipped in with its products. The Google calculator accepts quite a few funny measurements, which can also be entered as expressions. Apart from mathematical and scientific expressions, expressions like “the answer to life, the universe and everything” will give you 42 as the answer, a reference to Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. Leave it to Google to tweak your search for answers.
Have you tried your hand at Breakout yet? Let us know how it went, along with your high scores.
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