It was created by Steve Fry for the Japanese company ZOO Corporation and published by Spectrum HoloByte[3] for the North American market.

[6] Another version of the game, identical to the Super NES version, was made playable on the Genesis exclusively through the Sega Channel subscription service, which allowed subscribers to temporarily download games to their Genesis system for as long as the system was left on.

Reviewing the Game Boy version, GamePro praised a few aspects, such as the ability to reverse approaching blocks, but felt that the "eye-straining graphics" severely hamper the gameplay: "While Tetris has simple, easy-to-see shapes that fall individually, BreakThru!

Though they criticized some aspects of the graphics, they applauded the game's simple-to-learn yet strategically deep gameplay and variety of modes.

He remarked that the use of special objects complicates the gameplay without truly adding to it, and gave the game two out of five stars.

[14] In a retrospective review of the SNES version, Honest Gamers appreciated the initial concept of the game, but criticized how it frequently degrades into slow and frustrating gameplay once none of the remaining squares match each other.