Quarth is a hybrid puzzle game/shoot 'em up developed by Konami which was released in 1989 as an arcade game, sold as Block Hole outside Japan. Besides the arcade version, there were also ports of the game to the MSX2, Famicom, and Game Boy—home releases used the Quarth name worldwide. Quarth was released on the Konami Net i-mode service as Block Quarth, with an updated Block Quarth DX in 2001. It was released without the "DX" suffix in 2005, and was made globally available through Konami Net licensing on many i-mode services offered by mobile operators. In Europe, for example, it was available from O2 UK, O2 Ireland, and Telefónica Spain. In 2005, Konami also included the game in the Nintendo DS title . An emulated version of the game was released in 2006 for PlayStation 2 in Japan as part of the Oretachi Geasen Zoku Sono-series.
Gameplay
Quarth is a combination of Tetris-style gameplay and a fixed shooter in the Space Invaders tradition. The player's focus is on falling blocks, and the action is geometrical. Rather than arranging the blocks together to make a row of disappearing blocks, a spaceship positioned at the bottom of the screen shoots blocks upwards to make the falling block pattern into squares or rectangles. Once the blocks have been arranged properly, the shape is destroyed and the player is awarded points based on the shape's size. The blocks continue to drop from the top of the screen in various incomplete shapes. As each level progresses, the blocks drop at greater speed and frequency. There are also various power-ups which could be located to increase your ship's speed, among other bonuses. The game continues until the blocks reach the dotted line at the bottom of the screen, whereupon the player's ship is "quarthed," crushed flat.
Multi-player
The Arcade, MSX2 and Famicom versions had two different 2-player modes: a split screen mode with Player 1 on the left and Player 2 on the right, and a cooperative mode where both players shared the same screen. For the Game Boy, multiplayer required the Game BoyLink Cable with each player able to view only their fields on their own Game Boys.
Merchandise
Soundtrack
In addition, disc 14 of Konami Music Masterpiece Collection, which was released on October 1, 2004, is mostly devoted to Quarth.
The game soundtrack of Quarth Soundtracks was released on May 30, 2014 by EGG MUSIC and Konami Kukeiha Club and composed by Norio Hanzawa, exclusively in Japan.
In Japan, Game Machine listed Quarth on their December 1, 1989 issue as being the third most-successful table arcade unit of the year. It has been generally acclaimed by many online reviewers, though Nintendo Life gave the Game Boy port on the 3DS Virtual Console a 6/10.
