1991 · Puzzle

Gem'X

This is a puzzle game that involves tiles of different colours, which must be manipulated to clear a succession of increasingly-difficult levels.

Released: 1991
Platforms: Amiga Atari ST Atari ST/STE Commodore 64 Commodore C64/128/MAX
Genres: Puzzle
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Country: Germany

About

Gem'X is a puzzle video game for the Amiga, Commodore 64, and Atari ST. It was developed by Kaiko and published by Demonware in 1991. The game uses Japanese-style graphics, with interludes of mildly erotic, anime-esque images of girls. Kaiko is sometimes mistaken as a Japanese developer, but is German and at the time was created as a publishing label for A.U.D.I.O.S (Art Under Design, Imaginations Of Sound) until it became the main name.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The player is presented with two rectangular grids of coloured gems called fields. The field on the right contains a combination of coloured gems piled on top of each other. The left one contains a similar setup to the right, only this has several differences and may contain more gems. The aim is to click on gems on the left field to make them look identical to the right field within the given time limit.

To achieve the goal, the player can lower the colour value of a gem to enable it to match with its opposing gem in the right field. The order of colours is red, green, blue, pink and yellow. The player controls the cursor (a pointing hand) using the joystick. Pressing fire directly over a gem will lower the colour value two levels.

Development

Gem'X was the first game that Kaiko developed. Produced in 1990, the game was programmed by Torsten Lamparter, with graphics by Frank Matzke and Peter Thierolf as the project manager. Despite being developed in Germany, the game was designed to look like a Japanese game, complete with anime-style graphics inspired by Matzke's interest in manga culture, (garbled) Japanese text, and Kaiko's name chosen deliberately in order to sound Japanese. The music was written and composed by Chris Hülsbeck. Kiki's voice in the Amiga version was provided by Stephanie Padilla-Kaltenborn.

A sequel for the Amiga and MS-DOS, Gem'Z, also known as Super Gem'Z, was developed in 1992. The MS-DOS version was programmed by Marc Kamradt and Matthias Wiederwach. Kaiko took the only master copy of the new game to show off at the 1992 Cologne Computer Fair, where it was stolen. Within a few days, it was distributed as a pre-release crack.

Reception

Gem'X received generally positive reception from video game critics, due to its Japanese anime-style girl characters. UK magazines Amiga Power, Amiga Action, Computer and Video Games, ST Format and Zzap!64 scored the game an 88%, 75%, 64%, and 85%, respectively.