Retro Review: Quarth (Game Boy)

Let me get started by saying this: I know, I have been away from the blagospehere, or blagoblag, or blogonet, or whatever the hell you want to call it, for quite a while now. But hey, I'm back in business baby, and I have a retro review flying your way and most likely annoying the hell out of you, because well, that's just my style.

If you aren't interested in reading the whole review, just skip to the bottom to read my final thoughts. There's ice cream in it for you if

you read the whole thing though. I swear.

Quarth was originally released in November of 1989 as an arcade game, and was later ported to the Game Boy in on June 16 a year later, and the MSX2 in Japan a year later. The game is known as "Black Hole" outside of Japan, which means that I myself actually have my hands on the original Japanese cartridge, and I didn't even know it before looking it up. Hmm, neato. I guess that makes me lucky then?

Oh, and more thing before me get started; the cartridge that I have is apparently published by Ultra Games, but all the labels and all the box art I can find online says the game is published by Konami. I have no idea...

Now, I'm not gonna lie, you've probably never heard of Quarth, Black Hole, or whatever you want to call it. I don't blame you. Hell, the only reason I own it is because it came with the copy of Metroid 2 I purchased for $2.50 as a free game pak. But the question is, are you really missing out on anywthing? Is Quarth a hidden gem? Is it worth picking up, or spending the money on, even if that money is simply $2.50? Well, to put it quite simply, hell no!

The basic idea of Quarth is pretty simple. You shoot blocks at shapes descending upon you to create rectangle and squares. Upon doing so, the shapes disappear. You can speed up the drop speed of the shapes, much like in Tetris, and there are also a variety of power-ups that can be acquired, depending on the size of the shape you "phazed" away. Now, there is a small problem with this. It's actually pretty much impossible for you to get power-ups without adding to the default shape; in other words, you can't just shoot the minimum number of blocks. You have to sometimes shoot a ridiculous number of blocks onto the shape to make it large enough, and by the time you're done doing this, you're already dead, because the shape has already hit your own damn self and triggered the "game over". And worse yet, you always seem to get the same two power-ups, even though the "power-up field", as I call it, as room for way more than just 2. And don't think that you can stack up on multiple power-ups of the same kind, because you can't. You can only hold one of each type of power-up at a time. But you know what, for me, really takes the cake with these damned power-ups!? Not only are they useless, hard to get, and just plain not worth it, but if you have more than one type of power-up, you cannot, repeat, CANNOT, change between the types. I tried every button, and I wasn't able to switch between my fast-shot or my screen-clearer. That's just freakin' ridiculous! Why would anyone ever do that!? If I need my screen clearer, I have to get rid of my fast-shot, and if I need my fast-shot, I need to get rid of my damned screen clearer! Does that make any sense to you!?

Beyond my rants on useless power-ups, this game is just plain repetitive. I found myself slightly entertained at first, shooting blocks at shapes and watching them disappear, while tapping my fingers to the kinda catchy music. And then I played for another five minutes, and I realized that, oh shit, the music loops every 30 seconds, the same exact shapes that you just destroyed and filing down yet again, and you freaking fingers are hurting because the level designers never thought to place one shape directly next to another. No, you always have to be constantly fidgeting around all over the place if you even want to think of beating this damned game. And yes, I checked, the levels are pre-defined. No random generation here folks, which makes an already grinding, aggravating, and repetitive experience all the more so!

The sound is annoying. I found myself leaving it off most of the time, and do I really need to explain why? Annoying beeps and bloops and music that loops every 30 seconds is not pretty. The graphics are nothing to show off either. I know this is GameBoy, and that you don't have much to work with when it comes to a game like this, but come on! At least give us some differently designed blocks, or some interesting ships with nice little details here or a few neat pixels over there. But no, we're looking at the same crap over and over and over, and the sip designs are uninspired and lazy.

All in all, Quarth is just not worth the price of admission, even if that price is a simple 2 dollars. It's extremely light on content, and what you do get is repetitive and boring. Stay very far away from this abomination.

I give Quarth 43 poorly-designed labels out of 100.