Quarth [Model KDS-H7]

Quarth © 1990 Konami Industry Company, Limited.

Quarth is an unique puzzle/shooter game by Konami and conversion of the arcade game of the same name originally released in 1989. A weird and destructive phenomenon has turned gravity on its head throughout the galaxy, and planets as well as asteroids and stars have been transformed into deadly blocks. They are now heading towards Earth and a group of scientists prepares to launch Quarth, a pod-shaped ship especially designed to counter the threat. The goal of the game is fairly simple - blocks of various shapes descend towards the Quarth located at the bottom of the screen, and the small ship must shoot small square pieces and attach them to the moving blocks in order to fill them. Once a block is filled (or its boundaries closed), the screen stops moving and the large block slowly disappears and leaves space to more blocks to clear up. Connected blocks can also be filled at the same time and trigger chain reactions for extra points. The game doesn't feature power-ups per se, but colored blocks occasionally appear and released various special abilities (symbolized by a letter) when cleared, such as bonus points (B), screen freeze (S), double score (C) or a powerful erase bomb (E) that wipes out everything on screen at once. Quarth features nine different levels (an option gives the player the opportunity to choose which level to start from) and three two-player modes (the alternating Change Play, the cooperative Tag Match and the competitive Vs Play).