Cutie Q

Cutie Q (キューティーＱ, Kyūtī Kyū) is an arcade game that was released by Namco in 1979. It is the second sequel to Gee Bee, which was released in the previous year. It is also the first game from the company to display its year on its start screen, and award an extra life (instead of a "replay" or extra credit) on getting a preset point value.

Gameplay

Like its predecessors, Cutie Q plays like a mix of pinball and Breakout-style games. The playfield has features derived from pinball games, such as a spinner in the middle, various rollovers, an entry lane for the ball (though without a plunger), and drains in the bottom corners. However, as in Breakout, the ball is unaffected by gravity, and continuously bounces. The player controls a pair of paddles which slide horizontally across the screen, and there are rows of blocks to break at the top of it.

A similar game called Pinball Spectacular was released by Commodore for their VIC-20 and Commodore 64 home computers. The VIC-20 version features a board layout which is almost identical to that for Cutie Q (it even includes the ghost rollover), while the C64 version is slightly altered, including some aspects of the board for Bomb Bee (most notably, the two 10/100-point bumpers in the top-left and top-right corners of the screen), and replaces the ghost rollover with the Commodore logo.