Apple II Demo Program Cassette Tape (included game)

When the first fully-assembled Apple II systems began shipping in June 1977, a single tape cassette was included, containing demonstration programs written in Integer BASIC by Steve Wozniak. Notably, one side of the tape held the first Apple II version of Breakout, inspired by Wozniak's own work on Atari's blockbuster arcade game of the same title.

Owing to the monitor's horizontal orientation, the playfield is rotated 90 degrees from that of the arcade original - paddle on the left, brick wall on the right, arranged in 8 columns of increasing point value; bounce the ball off the paddle to knock out the bricks and rack up score accordingly. Lose all five balls, and the game will give you a frank verbal evaluation: 720 is a perfect score, while under 100 will earn you the questionable award of "terrible!". And if the default color set doesn't meet your aesthetic approval, you can customize it to your heart's content.

Some of the Apple II's features were a direct result of this game's demands - color graphics, sound and paddle controllers. The intent was to showcase the feasibility of implementing such a game, in an accessible programming language, on a consumer-level machine: until then, this was possible using expensive, custom hardware. Remakes of this game would later surface on the Apple II (and derivatives), including Brick Out and Little Brick Out.

The other side of the tape held Color Demos, a succinctly-titled collection of routines showing off the machine's graphics capabilities. The BASIC source code for both programs was included in the original Apple II "mini manual".