Qix

Qix was originally an arcade game first released way back in 1981 by Taito.

Taito America's resident GS gurus Ryan Ridges and John Lund are responsible for this neat conversion, complete with new graphics and thumping music score.

Qix could best be described as an action arcade/strategy game. Play involves that you trap the computer virus Qix, accomplished by creating boxes within the game field from edges of said field. This can be done in two ways, the first is to press and release the fire button (either open-apple or option if using the keyboard) and move in the direction (keypad or joystick) you wish to shape a rectangle in the playfield. The other option is pretty similar, only that if you continue to hold the fire button without releasing it and then make a rectangle, you receive double points. The down side of this is you move twice as slow.

The object is to fill a certain percentage of the playfield, called the 'threshold', which is a required percentage given on the right hand side of the screen, to move onto the next level. An animated demo is given if you do not begin play which very nicely outlines how to play the game.

While Qix is certainly one of the more innovative arcade games of our time, it's tough - I myself have never passed level 5 and neither have I seen anyone develop a strategy to contain the Qix (which becomes faster and targets in on your sprite in later levels) effectively. I'd be interested to know how - write in with your strategies!

Antoine Discovered some Easter Eggs with his new 2016 crack.

Jukebox Mode
Launch the game and keep the open-apple key pressed until you arrive at the title screen. Release the button. Listen to the music or switch to another music by pressing the option key (or button 2). To leave the jukebox, press open-apple (or button 1).

Cheat Mode
Note that you must have the original disk or a clean crack of it.
The cheat mode is activated if the root folder contains a file named CHEAT.DAT. The file is 7 bytes long and adds 6 new keys to the game. I've set them from A to F but:
- the first and last cheat keys serve no purpose
- the keys must have their hi-bit set
The file you have on the disk at brutaldeluxe.fr/crack contains the following ASCII values: C1 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 where
Code:

C1 = A = nothing, as the first key
C1 = A = pause game, as the second key
C2 = B = go to next level
C3 = C = get an extra life
C4 = D = display bar (?)
C5 = E = restart game
C6 = F = nada