Classic of the Month - Qix

Manufacturer:	Taito
Developer:	Taito
Genre:	Puzzle
Board:	Dedicated board
Year:	1981

During the early 80s there were a number of games that were based on painting, including Q*Bert, Amidar and this month's classic, Qix. The idea behind the game was very simple: using a diamond-shaped device to draw borders on the play field, you must trap the game's titular Qix (which looks a bit like the Mystify screensaver on Windows) and/or take possession of at least 75% of the territory. Contact with the Qix or if the Qix touched your cutting line, took a life and so claiming territory was about how cunning or brave you could be. To give the player even more to worry about, patrolling the edge of the game field were one or more Sparx. Like the Qix, contact with these critters is fatal, which means sometimes you are forced into the play field — even if you're not ready to move. What's more, once you create a border the Sparx can then negotiate those lines too, making the game even more challenging. Do you just go for it and try to carve out as much of a border in one go as possible or do you do it piece meal, dragging out the game, but also providing the Sparx with more lines to negotiate and therefore decreasing the chances they will come straight for you? The game also gives you two drawing speeds, fast and slow, the latter of which gives you more points, only adding to the player's dilemmas.

Like many games from that era, Qix is very sparse, but it also manages to offer game play that can be fast-paced or full of deliberation and tactics, depending entirely on how you want to play from one moment to the next. To go along with the sparse looks were sound effects that sound more like static than anything else. That wasn't uncommon in 1981 and in the case of Qix those primitive sounds suit the game perfectly.

Taito produced a number of sequels, including Qix II-Tournament and Super Qix, before taking the concept to create sci-fi themed Volfied a decade later. A number of home versions have been produced over the years, most recently Qix++ for Xbox Live Arcade (and no, I can't explain the C reference in the title), which added collectables and different shaped Qixes.

As early arcade games go, Qix inspired very few clones. The only ones I know of are Kix on the BBC Micro B, Styx for MS-DOS, Fortix on PC and Light Fish on Xbox Live Indie Games. Perhaps the most famous (or should that be infamous?) clone is the Gals Panic series by Kaneko, in which claiming territory reveals drawing of a scantily-clad Japanese girls and generic female anime characters. It's a shame that such a rock solid concept got used for such salacious purposes. So let's forget about that for now and see the original in action:

MTW