Qix, a game I spent hours and hours on at the bowling alley when I was young. I would walk in at high noon on a Saturday and stumble out hungry and poor into the darkness of night. Yes, it was a game that I was obsessed with. Taito has brought that game back and launched it on the Xbox LIVE Arcade. But it is far different than that Qix of the past.

In fact, and as far as I’m concerned this was a major gaff, they didn’t even include the original mode in the game. Now it’s all techno music and neon bright colors. It’s strobe effects and fancy technological looking backdrops. It’s good and it’s fun yes, but it just doesn’t feel like Qix.

So the story goes that humanity uses computers for everything, eventually a Cyber Police force is created to patrol the cyberspace. Viruses take on a life of their own and become more evolved and known as Qix (no idea why, maybe because words with Q, X or Z are cool?). Elite humans show up and start eradicating the Qix because automated programs aren’t smart or fast enough to do it. They are called Markers and that is what you are as a player.

The game is broken down into different sections (for each mode). There are three modes (two are downloadable add-ons). The modes are Standard, Float and Hunt and the only true difference in them is the scoring (in a nutshell). Standard is a normal Qix game where you cut lines to take space away and trap the Qix into the smallest possible space on the board. Hunt is more of a survival mode where you try to take out as many Qix as you can before you die. Float simply says "adds the creation of floats to the standard rules. Now I have found nowhere in the help what a float is and whether the Marker or the Qix create them so as far as I’m concerned it’s the same as standard.

There are several types of Qix that you fight now instead of just the light-saber like ones from the original. There are butterfly Qix and snake-tailed Qix and some that shoot and some that are extremely quick. This all does add some variation to the game and is probably what keeps it from feeling like the Qix of old.

Standard mode, as I said, is sectioned off. Each section has only 8 levels (there are 4 sections, so 32 levels total) and a section might take you as little as 10 minutes to play through. You do get to upgrade your marker as you go to make it stronger, faster or cut quicker. But again, it adds little to the game.

The game also offers multiplayer in local ranked and unranked XBLA matches. Scoring is based on percentage gained and the person with the highest score wins obviously. It makes for some very quick matches if you have four players (the maximum number) all attacking the same Qix. I could certainly see a co-op or team play set of downloadable content in the future for this game where two player teams are ranked on speed and percentage etc.

The graphics are a lot of flashing and bright colors and while writing this I’m still seeing after-images from the game. So there’s most certainly got to be some kind of warning attached to the game for those with epilepsy etc.

The game sounds are few, your marker makes sounds, the Qix make sounds and that’s about it. But it’s all drowned out by the overpowering techno music.

All in all the game isn’t bad. I do find myself stopping in from time to time to play a quick section. However, I miss the Qix of old and think I’ll just go find and play that instead of playing this all the time.