Did you know that Mario dressed up as a bullfighter in a secret ending of the Game Boy Qix? And it wasn’t the only transformist rarity of Taito’s classic.
Qix was never sparked by that sexist controversy , obviously, basing its mechanics simply on discovering most of the background of the screen using a pointer. Everything was neat, without fanfare. There was no distraction, except for the dangers of the stage, which could ruin the geometric figures. A legend about which I have just discovered something new .
And is that thanks to the tweet of The Ultimate Mario Fan I just was surprised to see that in the Game Boy version of Qix there was an ending in which Mario disguised himself as a bullfighter while he saw flamenco dancers in the foreground .
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Mario Mexican, African, Chinese, Indian, English …: Did you know that Mario dressed up as a bullfighter in a secret ending of the Game Boy Qix? And it wasn’t the only transformist rarity of Taito’s classic.
It was not the only secret ending that drew clichés , having in the case of Mexico a Mario dressed in typical traditional clothing in the middle of a desert. Already today we saw it in all its glory inside one of the Super Mario Odyssey suits from Nintendo Switch, by the way. But on the GB Qix it was first .
Other transformations / appearances were within the United Kingdom as a royal guard and with the iconic Big Ben in the background, or with the Chinese wall in the background. Even Mario as if he were a native African hunting an elephant or as a snake charmer with the beautiful Indian Taj Mahal in the background. Mario has no limits!
Bearing this in mind now, it is clear that this late conversion to the 1990 Game Boy ( the original arcade debuted in 1981 ) automatically becomes the best for seeing Mario in multiple ranges, even if it was the worst version on a graphical level. At the end of the day this mattered little in Tetris as well .
It was not, however, the only appearance of a character from the famous Nintendo saga within this revolutionary classic by Taito, when the moustached plumber appeared in the credits scene with the highest score (surpassing the 500,000 point barrier). victory accompanied by Luigi and Peach in the castle of the Mushroom Kingdom. Each milestone on the scoreboard unlocked, in fact, one of the secret endings, the easiest to see Mario disguised as a Mexican when he asked for at least 50,000 points . However, none of this was replicated by the later version of the NES in 1991. Ergo, the Game Boy is better.
On the other hand, separate mention of the Japanese advertisement for the time. Speechless.
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More than a decade without Qix (not counting its clones)
It is still a shame that a game as original as Qix in 1981 has hardly had any official continuity . With a first sequel that hardly contributed anything of interest in 1982, his first visual leap was made to pray to Super Qix .
It was 1987 and until then there were already almost a dozen clones of Taito’s work, although its true boom would not occur until the arrival of Gals Panic in 1990, the most famous clone of Qix in arcades . Claim? Women in undergarments whose image was unlocked when cleaning the screen, coupled with a bad slime with its difficulty, seriously penalizing mistakes.
That Qix is one of the most copied games is not surprising , especially after Kaneko’s arcade aimed at adult audiences, creating behind it another row of spicy clones that, despite maintaining the mechanics of the original Qix, were ostensibly away from his style betting on the easy sex business.
Fortunately, Taito did not abandon his license, despite the cancellation of Twin Qix in 1995 . And it is that in the middle of 2000 we were surprised by a radical turn by means of Qix Adventure for Game Boy Color . Yes, an adventure where we moved around a map engaging in conversations and duels with the beings of their island. On the latter, his presentation seemed vilely copied from the first Pokémon …
Qix Neo , already for PlayStation in 2001, returned to the traditional formula, having in Qix ++ for Xbox Live Arcade in 2009 its last official appearance. A game that could not understand the time in which it came out, leaving a very improvable trail for those who expected an evolution of its formula as Bandai Namco has been doing with its iconic Pac-man with the CE , 256 and Mega Tunnel Battle .
It is appreciated, at least, that it is one of the hundreds of backward compatible Xbox games , but it is clear that it is time for a new update of Qix . That or pull games that have gone further, like the great Patchwork Heroes of PSP.
