As the shapes get closer to the bottom, you feel the same sense of panic as in Tetris when the bricks threaten to hit the ceiling. It also plays much like Space Invaders, with your spacecraft zipping from left to right, shooting the rogue shapes before they touch the bottom and scatter you into pixels. You know that you’re on to something different when a video game reminds you of both Tetris and Space Invaders at the same time, and indeed Quarth is an unusual gaming experience; more importantly though, it’s a very addictive one.

Sadly, Quarth’s originality would count for nothing at the box office: the arcade machine was as commercially successful as Andrew Ridgley’s solo career, and renaming it Block Hole in Europe made little difference. A Famicom version was released, but never made it over to America, presumably due to a lack of interest. Amidst the flurry of puzzle games that came out for the home consoles during 1990, Quarth found itself marginalised.

Only a low-key Gameboy translation (titled Quarth in all regions) gave it anything like the wider audience it deserved in the west, and since the arcade machine has long gone, this excellent mini-version is probably the best way to sample it nowadays outside of MAME. Gameboy Quarth crops up on Ebay every so often, and with a little luck you may even find it second hand in specialist outlets that stock retro-titles. It’s worth the search.