BreakThru!

Overview

BreakThru! (not to be confused with the 1987 game BreakThru) is a tile-matching puzzle game developed by ZOO Corporation and published by Spectrum HoloByte for Windows PCs and Macintosh computers in 1994.

One of five games from the publisher that's endorsed (or "introduced") by Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov (the others being WildSnake, ClockWerx, Qwirks, and Knight Moves), BreakThru is a variation of the "SameGame" puzzle genre.

Each stage in the game begins with a completely-filled wall of different-colored blocks, and players must use their cursor to clear away groups of same-colored blocks and completely clear the playfield within the time limit. Unlike other games in the "SameGame" genre, BreakThru has additional blocks falling from the top of the playfield to keep the game moving, as well as bonus power-up tiles to clear groups in different ways.

The game has 24 levels split into groups of 4, with each group taking place in a different city (Berlin, London, San Francisco, Moscow, New York, and Beijing).

The game also received ports to both the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (by Artech Digital Entertainments) and Game Boy (by Realtime Associates Inc. Seattle Division) in 1994 for North America, and later received ports to the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation in 1995 for Japan (both developed and published by Shoeisha).