Here's a nice distraction from a day spent pounding away at the keyboard. Google is celebrating the birthday of the one of the earliest examples of gaming today, Atari's arcade smash Breakout.
Curious? Make your way over to Google, punch in "Atari Breakout," and do an image search. Then watch as the screen transforms into a version of the game all within the confines of your browser. Now, good luck getting any work done before lunch.
Breakout hit arcades in April of 1976, and alongside other classics like Pong, Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede, and others, helped propel Atari into the stratosphere as THE gaming company, until the industry crashed in 1983. But the legacy still stands, as evidenced by Google's little easter egg today.
Google's paid homage to classic games and gaming culture before. In May 2010, Google replaced its traditional homepage with a playable Pac-Man game to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the dot munching disc. Likewise, if you enter the Konami code (shame on you if you had to click that link) into Google's feed radar...well, give it a try for yourself. Their respect for gaming culture has also found its way into some of their subsidiaries as well, as anyone who's stumbled onto a game of Snake while waiting for a YouTube video to load knows.
For poops n' giggles, here are a few other phrases for you to peck into Google's search bar, offering similar easter eggs:
- "Zerg Rush"
- "bacon number" followed by the actor or actress of your choice to see how many degrees before they
- "find chuck norrise" then click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
- "do a barrel roll"
- "tilt" or "askew"
- "Conway's game of life"
- "binary"
- "hexadecimal"
Feel free to share some of your favorite Google easter eggs in the comment section below.