I just learned this, but according to the tabloid Star Magazine, Barack Obama’s BlackBerry is pretty much just a vehicle for playing BrickBreaker. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. But apparently he does play before bed to unwind, and has a respectable high score of 15,000. Mr. President, I know things are pretty busy right now, but if you ever need any BrickBreaker tips, I am available for private coaching. Just drop me an email!
Here is some important information about your BlackBerry Brick Breaker settings. Make sure you check this out before you embark on your epic high score attempt.
Make sure you’ve visited BrickBreaker’s Options menu and configured your paddle settings appropriately.
First make sure you’re happy with your paddle speed. Try out the different settings and find the one that feels most comfortable. I like Medium; it strikes a good balance between speed and accuracy.
Second, try out the paddle acceleration option. When this box is checked, your paddle becomes sensitive to how quickly you move your finger on the BlackBerry’s trackball. If you drag your finger across the trackball rapidly, the paddle will move very quickly, helping you whip across the screen lightning-fast to catch a stray ball while still retaining fine-grained control when you don’t need to move quite so fast. Personally, I leave this unchecked because I’ve found that on balance it makes the paddle more difficult to control.
To pause BrickBreaker while you’re playing, press the red “hang up” key on your phone. This keeps your game saved in the background. You can also hit the BlackBerry’s menu button and select “Hide” or “Switch Application”.
Don’t select “Close” because that will end your game in progress and ruin the awesome high score you were working on. Warning: if you ever remove the BlackBerry’s battery, your game in progress will be erased. When you have a good game going and you drop your phone and the battery falls out, that is just not cool.
Sometimes, when the BlackBerry is sending/downloading email or other data, your BrickBreaker game might “stutter” a bit. If you find this happening often and you’re losing unnecessary lives as a result, you might want to turn off your mobile connections while playing. Just remember to turn it back on when you’re done!
To turn off your mobile connections, go to Manage Connections in the main BlackBerry menu, then select “Turn All Connections Off”. When you are done playing, return to this menu and click “Restore Connections”.
To check the current BrickBreaker leaderboard, hit the BlackBerry’s right-click menu from inside BrickBreaker. Select the High Score option. The leaderboard isn’t available on the Internet — you can only see it on your BlackBerry device.
As of this writing, the #1 BrickBreaker high score is 2,121,701,232, by a player named Johanna.
Honestly, I sometimes have a hard time believing scores like this. I know that it’s possible to rack up an unlimited score if you follow my BrickBreaker game strategy. However, to reach a score like Johanna’s — over two billion points! — you’d need to go through all 34 levels roughly 100,000 times. If you worked through all 34 levels every single day, by my reckoning it would still take over 300 years to get a score that high. So, something’s fishy there. [Update: As a couple people have pointed out, it’s also impossible to get a score ending in ‘2’.]
That being said, you can still rack up a 100,000 or a 1,000,000 point score. You might not make it to the top of the leaderboard (unless you have 300 years of free time), but you’ll still have the satisfaction of “beating” BrickBreaker, and perhaps having the highest score amongst your friends!
How about you: what’s your highest BrickBreaker score right now? Let me know in the comments section below.
Update: I created an unofficial BrickBreaker leaderboard. If you want, you can take a picture of your 6- or 7-figure high score using a friend’s phone. Submit the photo to me using the form on the unofficial leaderboard page, and I’ll post it up on this site.
Update #2: If you are a BrickBreaker Pro looking for a new challenge, check out Speed BrickBreaker.
My name's Pierre and I created this guide to help you improve your BrickBreaker high score and reach new levels in the game. More...
