Quester

Quester
Developer(s)	Namco
Publisher(s)	Namco
Producer(s)	Toru Iwatani[1]
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release	1987
Genre(s)	Breakout
Mode(s)	Single player, 2-player

Quester (クエスター, Kuesutā) is an arcade game released in September 1987^[2] by Namco. It runs on Namco System 1 hardware, and is the company's response to Taito's Arkanoid (released a year earlier in 1986).

It was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2009 under the name Namco Quester^[3] (ナムコクエスターNamuko Kuesutā).

Gameplay

The player controls the craft Paddle at the bottom of the screen with the rotary controller, and must hit a ball back and forth against a formation of bricks at the top of the screen. The player moves on to the next screen when all bricks are destroyed. Paddle can also collect a few powerups by hitting certain bricks, which can increase Paddle's size, creating a force field at the bottom of the screen, make a force field in the centre of the screen that can split the ball, or give and extra life to the player in the form of a Special Flag. There are also generator blocks that create infinite red and pink bricks, stone blocks that cannot be destroyed, and speed up and speed down blocks, which can speed up or slow down the ball respectively. Killer Meteors appear on most of the rounds, which can bounce the ball in the opposite direction if hit, and diminish Paddle's size if its size is larger (it will have no effect if Paddle is in its normal size). When the player gets to Round 33, the player will have to defeat a boss known as "Burida", and is protected by a metal wall. The ball needs to hit the top side to break the wall, and the player earns a 40,000 point bonus when the ball hits Burida.

Quester Special Edition

A special version of the game, Quester Special Edition, is known to exist.^[4] This version of Quester features different levels with designs based on other Namco characters. It is currently unknown if the game was ever released.

References