Cutie Q is an arcade game

Arcade game

An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...

 that was released by Namco

Namco

is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...

 in 1979. It is the third in a series that includes Gee Bee

Gee Bee (arcade game)

Gee Bee is Namco's first internally designed arcade game, released in 1978. It was developed by Tōru Iwatani, who went on to create Pac-Man...

and Bomb Bee

Bomb Bee

Bomb Bee is an arcade game that was released by Namco in 1979 . It is the sequel to Gee Bee, which was released in the previous year. This was a two player ball and paddle game, which also featured a pinball simulation....

.

Gameplay

Like its predecessors, Cutie Q plays like a mix of pinball and Breakout

Breakout clone

A Breakout clone is a sub-class of the "bat-and-ball" genre introduced with the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis and Atari's Pong...

 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 continually bounces. You control a pair of paddles that slide horizontally across the screen, and there are rows of blocks to break.

A similar (most likely unauthorized) game called Pinball Spectacular was released by Commodore for the VIC-20 and Commodore 64

Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...

 home computers. The VIC-20 version features a board layout almost identical to Cutie Q (even including the ghost rollover), while the C64 version is slightly altered, including some aspects of the board for Bomb Bee

Bomb Bee

Bomb Bee is an arcade game that was released by Namco in 1979 . It is the sequel to Gee Bee, which was released in the previous year. This was a two player ball and paddle game, which also featured a pinball simulation....

 (most notably, the bumpers in the top corners), and replaces the ghost rollover with a Commodore logo.

Related releases

This game was featured in the Japanese release of Namco Museum Volume 2 for the PlayStation. For the American version of Namco Museum Volume 2, Super Pac-Man was featured in place of Cutie Q, but an analysis of the disc's files reveals that Cutie Q's files are still present, including the executable file. However, attempts to run the executable file directly fail, so the game is rendered unplayable in the American version of Namco Museum Volume 2, due to not having a menu icon to run it during gameplay. In 2007, the game was also added to Namco Museum Remix

Namco Museum Remix

Namco Museum Remix is a video game compilation for the Wii, featuring a wide array of classic and updated Namco arcade games. Featured in the compilation are the original arcade versions of Cutie Q, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Gaplus, Mappy, Pac & Pal, Pac-Mania, Super Pac-Man and Xevious...

 for the Wii

Wii

The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...

console.