Quester

Released a year after Arkanoid, Quester is Namco's attempt at making their own power up based Breakout variant. It's a paddle based game where the player moves a bat left and right and uses it to deflect a ball towards the bricks that appear above him. The bricks have different colours representing different point values. In addition to the regular bricks there are also various special bricks including durable bricks that take multiple hits to destroy, generator bricks that generate new blocks around them, stone bricks that are indestructible and speed up/down bricks that change the speed of the ball.

Some of the bricks contain power ups that are released when hit and the player can collect these with the paddle. There are four different power ups in the game. Most common is the Guro Riaru which increases the size of the bat. On certain levels there are falling meteors that when hitting the bat decrease its size. Another power up is the Ba Riaru which creates a force field on the playing field and if hit it will generate nine extra balls. There's also the Rai Naru which creates a wall below the bat that will cover the player if a ball is missed. It can however only take one hit before being destroyed. Finally there are Rally-X Special Flags which grants the player an extra life when collected. Extra lives are also earned by reaching predetermined point values. If the player manages to keep the ball in play for a certain amount of time it will split into three separate balls.