Qix

Qix saw the light of day in 1981 as an arcade machine by Taito America. The designers were Randy and Sandy Pfeiffer. The name is to be pronounced kicks. One of the designers had a car with the license plate JUS4QIX.

The idea of Qix is that you cut out as much as possible of the screen with your joystick, but avoid the Qix floating around the free area in the center and the Sparx moving along the rim of the screen. The Qix can only hurt you while you are cutting.

The first PC clone was probably Styx by Windmill Software in 1983. A better-known one was Xonix by Ilan Rav and Dani Katz in 1984. Xonix has remained a common name for Qix clones in Russia.

The Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows Volume 4 contained a game named JezzBall that had gameplay similar, but not identical to Qix. True Qix implementations for Windows remained rare till DirectX came along.

Pix or it Didn't Happen

An important step was Super Qix in 1987. Developed by Kaneko for Taito, it was the first Japanese Qix game. Befitting Japanese tastes, it replaced the abstract Qix with more detailed drawn enemies, but most important it used the gameplay to uncover pictures of castles (Neuschwanstein seems not to have been among them).

Three years later, Kaneko used their Super Qix experiences for an arcade machine of their own. Gals Panic! replaced the castles with young ladies that wore less and less as the player advanced. This kind of reward had been done before, but not as integrated into gameplay. Qix remains a very good concept for erotic arcade games. There have been two Taiwanese PC games of this sort, the lovely Silk that stays very close to Gals Panic, and Lady Love, which replaces the graphics with photographs of Chinese beauties. You'll find two similar games among the downloads below.