Brick Bash
Spectrum · BASIC
Catch the ball, choose its return and clear the wall
10 units
Eighteen bricks. One ball. Catching it is only half the job: where it meets the paddle decides where it goes next.
Use O/P to move left and right and SPACE to serve. Catch near the paddle’s left end for a leftward return, its centre for a vertical return, or its right end for a rightward return. Clear all eighteen bricks to finish. A miss ends the attempt; R restores the wall and Q quits. S starts from the title.
This game runs in Sinclair BASIC on a stock 48K ZX Spectrum. It is deliberately silent. Three coloured rows help us read the wall, while disappearing bricks and the BRICKS count show progress without relying on colour alone.
Pictures, positions and memory
The ball moves in pixels; the paddle and bricks are drawn in character cells. We connect those coordinate systems, check rectangular overlap and keep a separate array of live bricks. Screen colour never decides a collision.
We start with a new short program and explain the BASIC needed as it grows. A keep-up game comes before a one-brick challenge. Then a temporary wall inspector lets us enter positions and see which brick or gap they identify. Reconnecting that query to the moving ball gives us the full wall; aiming adds a choice to every catch.
The final lessons finish the instructions, retry and exit cycle, then save a tape that reconstructs the game in a fresh session. There is no earlier game’s source to import and no machine-code helper to install.