I know that look. You don’t know what Quarth is. It’s okay. Not very many people have even heard of Quarth, much less know what it is. That’s what I’m here for. To help.
Quarth is an arcade game (with a port to the original Game Boy) that’s an interesting combination of vertically-scrolling shooting game and a puzzle game. Your ship is in a fixed location across the bottom of the play field, and various shapes of blocks descend inexorably toward your ship. If they cross the line at the bottom of the screen, you lose. What do you do? Thankfully, your ship is equipped with armaments that shoot smaller blocks. You use these smaller blocks to fill in the gaps in the larger pieces. Once you have built a piece into a square or rectangle, the piece is eliminated from the play field and is no longer a threat.
That’s it. Simple, fun, and addicting. Until you accidentally fire one too many blocks down the middle of a U-shaped piece, and then frantically move to build up the rest of the shape to match.
But that’s only if you panic.