Quarth (Famicom) Review

Quarth (Famicom) Review

Date Released: 13 April 1990

Date Played: 17 January 2022

Introduction:

Quarth is a quirky game developed by Konami.  It's a mixture of a 2D puzzle game like Tetris combined with a vertical scrolling shmup (or so Wikipedia would have you believe).  It was originally released in arcades back in 1989 and was known as Block Hole outside of Japan.  This version released for the Famicom is a good port and is a ton of fun to play. It's very tiring to play though and your fingers will be begging for mercy, so break out your NES Advantage Joystick and get your hands all limbered up, because you're going to need every bit of dexterity that you can muster.

Gameplay:

You play as one of two ships that are completely identical other their appearance.  One is a standard space ship that appears to be decked out for battle and is basically as generic as possible.  The other one is a cute lunar lander capsule that's being carried by cherubs and totally awesome and unique.  I love it and have no idea why anyone would ever choose the boring old space ship. On this same screen you can select which of the 10 levels you would like to start from (like Tetris).  Each of these have increased difficulty and if you start from the beginning, get ready for the long haul because it will take a while and the tendons in your hands will be screaming. Still, it's nice to be able to pick up where you left off without having to spend a bunch of time playing through the same easier stages over and over again.

Gameplay is unique and I don't know of any games quite like this.  It does share some similarities with other games in terms of concepts and execution, but it's really its own thing and I'm surprised it isn't more well known.  Your ship sits at the bottom of the screen and can move left or right as the screen slowly scrolls upwards.  Instead of enemies to shoot, you will encounter various quadrilateral (squares and rectangles for those of us who haven't had geometry in a couple of decades) shapes with missing pieces.  Your ship shoots blocks instead of bullets and your goal is to fill in the missing pieces of the rectangles.  When a rectangle is made whole, it will vanish and award you with points. This is obviously very similar to Tetris as you have to train yourself to recognize patterns and prioritize which blocks to clear first. The trick is to find groups of rectangles placed together and chain them into one huge block for a bonus score and to clear the screen faster. One technique that you'll need to employ if you want to succeed is to realize that the screen stops scrolling as the blocks are cleared.  So, if you clear a large block for a big score bonus, you'll have several seconds of the screen scrolling being frozen.  This is your opportunity to try to clear the remaining blocks on the screen.  Keeping these clears chained together is essential to have time to deal with everything and if you're not able to clear the blocks fast enough, and they reach the line right above your ship, you crash and lose a life.  Once you're out of lives, it's game over.  There are several powerups to assist you. They have abilities that range from stopping the scrolling, giving score multipliers, or even destroying all blocks on screen. It's a fantastic system and is a perfect example of easy to learn and difficult to master.  You'll know everything you need to after only a couple of minute and is a perfect example of pick up and play arcade fun.

As mentioned above, there are 10 levels broken into 10 sections each and clearing each one will advance you to the next.  Difficulty ramps up very quickly and by stage 3, things will start to get pretty tense and hectic for the average gamer.  When using a joystick, you'll find yourself quickly tapping the fire button in rhythmic patterns as you tap the joystick to move quickly around the screen.  The way you control the joystick feels a lot like the Magical Drop series of games and if you were to watch someone's hands without knowing what game they're playing, you would have a tough time differentiating between the two.  I'm not sure how anyone can make much progress on this game using a standard controller because you'd have blisters on your fingers in no time.  You have to input a ton of commands at lightning speed even on some of the lower levels and it's very impressive to watch someone truly skilled have a go at this game.  Typing this review right now, my wrists are still tight and sore from my previous play session.

There are some 2-player cooperative and competitive options if you can get a friend to play with you.  They're a lot of fun and can get pretty intense during a heated play session.

Presentation:

Quarth looks pretty decent for a puzzle game from the 8-bit era.  You don't want things to look too busy because you need to read the patterns on the screen at lightning speed, but everything is colorful and vibrant. The backgrounds, borders, and blocks all have pallet swaps between stages and while overall aesthetics are sparse it really helps in the graphics department.   The music that accompanies the game is decent enough and has that trademark Konami feel, but it certainly isn't one of their best and even after hours of playing this game with the same couple of tracks repeated over and over, I can't even recall what they sound like or if there's a catchy melody. It's almost as if it went in one ear and right out the other.  Not a good sign for a game with such addictive gameplay. Still, as basic as the presentation is, it doesn't do anything to hinder the amount of fun you'll be having.

Conclusion:

This is a great little game that I'm surprised not more people know about.  It never left Japan on the Famicom and the only Western release (outside of the arcade) that I know of is on the original Game Boy.  I'm sure plenty people played it there as Konami was probably trying to cash in on the puzzle game craze that was brought on by Tetris being the pack-in game for the Game Boy, but I've never heard anyone mention it. It's a shame that it wasn't brought to the NES because I think it would have been a fairly popular game.  It's a ton of fun even if the music is a little lackluster and playing for more than a few minutes is super hard on your hands .  Other than that, my only complaint about the game is that I don't really see the shmup comparison.  If the screen just fell downwards like in Tetris rather than your ship flying upwards, no one would ever remotely consider comparing it to a shmup. Still, I see what Konami was aiming for and I commend them on an original concept even if it was a little harebrained.

If you're a fan of puzzle games or tense and twitch based arcade gaming, you have to give Quarth a try.  It's an underrated gem for sure.

Final Status: Played (I could clear up to stage 6)

Final Score: 8/10 (Pretty Great)