Jawbreaker

Jawbreaker is a video game programmed by John Harris and released in 1981 for the Atari 400/800 by On-line Systems.

Originally intended to be a fairly straight Pac-Man clone, Jawbreaker emerged as a relatively inventive version with unique gameplay. It was widely lauded by reviewers, and became a major seller for Sierra Online. The story of its creation forms a portion of Steven Levy's book, Hackers.

Jawbreaker is essentially a Pac-Man clone, in that a small yellow set of jaws is moved around the map to pick up small dots while avoiding the "jawbreakers" which roll around the map. If the jaws bite the jawbreaker, they will be destroyed and the player will lose a life. It was released for the Atari 8-bit.