Brickbreaker Conquest

Hello Bloggers,

     As many of you know, after one conquers the second round of 34, Brickbreaker becomes monotonous and more like a crack addiction than anything else.  It is no longer an activity that one engages in to pass those boring, and simply uninspiring moments in life, rather it becomes the reason you don’t remember what was said at your brother’s wedding (we already have alcohol for this people).

So I have often thought of different ways to make brick breaking more challenging. In the past, I have found myself playing on the shaky NYC subway, playing with my left hand, even with a blackberry in each hand, playing two games at once!  And I can tell you that there is nothing like trying to keep the ball from going under the “U” on level 16, while speeding down the freeway at 75 or 80 miles an hour.

Since there are quite a few people on this blog who consider themselves MasterBreakers, and can score well over 1,000,000 points, I have been throwing the idea around of a timed challenge.  Each player goes head-to-head for a set amount of time to see who can accumulate the most points. 

There would be some serious strategy involved in this type of competition.  Obviously, a player would not want to die because that wastes time.  Furthermore, one may choose to attempt hitting bricks from their bottom surfaces to make the ball bounce back down to one’s paddle to keep control over it.  And finally, one may even pass on lives and other capsules that a typical player salivates over, in order to keep a laser, which has the potential help one rack up big points quickly!

Of course there would be some chance involved.  We can’t control which player gets what capsules, but if the time interval is long enough (10 minute games), and we use a best of 5 game format, we can discover  who the real MasterBreaker actually is.

Yes, you may think this is an absurd challenge.  I cannot argue the contrary.  I dare each of you to explore how unreasonable your addiction to brickbreaker can become.

Hello Everybody, 

I just read some great comments posted under the section titled,  “The Day I Conquered BrickBreaker”.  Please focus your attention on the following hilarious comments:

                Manny from June 25, 2008

And my personal favorite comes to us from…

                BrickTears, posted July 25, 2008

Check the comments under “My High Score” to see our runner-up and winner of the “Angry Sarcasm” award:

                Billy Bob, posted on July 25, 2008

Wow, July 25^th was a good day for this blog.  I feel we really turned a corner.  You two have truly brought the ridiculousness of BrickBreaker addictions, and blogging about hand-held video games, to a totally new and awesome level. 

I Salute You

My phone just reset for no reason.  When this happens, it erases my current brickbreaker game. This is the second time this has occured and in both instances my score was over 700,000 points!  Today I think it was around 718,000 with over 250 lives accumulated.

On a recent ski trip to California, I had some time to break some bricks. I racked up 962,690 points with 332 lives. This particular quest just ended when the ball disappeared into the wall. Here is a screen shot:

As you can see, the ball is nowhere to be found.

My buddy Mikey is in town this week and is urging me to blog in a more active manner.  So here I am.  Last week I was in Los Angeles for the holidays and had some free time on my hands. I accumulated about 675,000 points with 301 lives and then my battery died. 

Current score: 280,520

Current lives: 121

 Happy brickbreaking in 2008.

So by now many of you know that there is a glitch in the BrickBreaker game.  If a brick is too close to the wall, and the ball bounces off of it in a certain way, the ball will disappear into the wall, never to be seen again (or at least until you restart the game).  I just had a game end in which I had 299,330 points and 140 lives.  Bummer.  I have a long flight tomorrow, so maybe I’ll start over!

When I first saw that people were scoring in the millions on brickbreaker, I thought that there must be a way to cheat.  At the time, I thought I was pretty good, but I had never scored much higher than 30,000 points.  Then a couple of months ago, I had my break through game.  That is when I realized that I could play the game forever without losing.  But this was not the day I conquered BrickBreaker.

I set out to beat the top score of about 1.3 million points.  I played often, and as many people do, I played too often.  There were days on the weekend when I would accumulate 80,000 points.  The day I conquered the game, was the day that I no longer had to play.  I had accumulated over 586,000 points and 140 lives, when my ball bounced off the corner of a brick and vanished into the wall.  The only way to continue play, was to start over.  I did not play for weeks and realized that my quest was over. 

 I no longer felt the urge to beat the top score.  Ironically, at some point during my quest, the game had conquered me.  Once I found myself staring at my phone in a movie theater during a movie that I had been dying to see!

 Have you been conquered by BrickBreaker?  I see strangers in the street, on subways, and in bars totally focused on their blackberrys.  Are they working hard?  Some are, but I have found that most are playing BrickBreaker.  Many good, hard-working people have fallen prey. 

 I hope hear some of your stories of conquests and defeats.  Maybe I can help you master the game, so you too can stop playing. 

I started BrickbreakerConquest.com to chronicle my quest into the greatest mobile phone game ever, BrickBreaker. Check back here daily to see my progress. You can also post your own scores and screen shots in the participate section.