Sunday, March 20, 2011

Game of the Week: Qix for arcade

In the early 1980s, arcades were dominated by three types of games: maze games such as Pac-Man, climbing games such as Donkey Kong, and space shooting games such as Space Invaderss.

But there were a handful of games that were different from all the rest.

Like Qix.

Released by the Taito America Corporation in 1981, Qix was unlike anything else in the arcades at the time. It's a bit difficult to describe the gameplay of Qix, but I'll give it a shot. At the beginning of each level, the screen is sort of like a big, blank drawing board. Upon that board the player has a small diamond-shaped marker that can be moved around the edges of the board. The object is for the player to use that marker to draw lines across sections of the drawing board, and if successful then those sections will be filled with colors. This sounds quite simple, and it would be if it weren't for the fact there is a "Sparx" bouncing around the screen, and if it touched the player's marker while the marker was drawing a line, then the player lost a "life." There was also the deadly "Fuse" roaming around the edges of the screen, and the player's marker had to avoid the "Fuse," as well.

QixOver the last several decades, Qix has never died. It sported several sequel arcade games, including Qix-II Tournament and Super Qix and Twin Qix, and it has been ported in one form or another to just about every computer system, home gaming system and handheld system there has been. The most modern version of Qix is a version known as Qix++ for the Xbox Live Arcade.


Video game links

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