Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces
Many of my previous posts have focused on the "Filmation" aesthetic style as an example of a spatial paradigm in digital games.
This post is an exploration toward evaluating another paradigm through the evolution of "cute" or "cartoony" games, with their genesis in the late 1970s and evolution through the 1980s.
Cutie Q
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| Cutie Q screen shot |
Cutie Q (Namco, 1979) was the third title in Toru Iwatani's Gee Bee series, preceded by Gee Bee (1978) and Bomb Bee (1979). The Gee Bee games were inspired by Breakout (Atari, 1976) which had kick-started arcade game popularity in Japan in a way that Pong (Atari, 1972) and its clones never had. The Gee Bee series mixed block-breaking gameplay with pinball and pachinko aesthetics, featuring interactive items on the playfield like pop bumpers, spinners, and rollover targets. Cutie Q is the first to feature cute characters in the game, such as pink ghost "minimon," yellow "walkmen," happy/unhappy faces, and characters on the rainbow-colored blocks.
Earlier arcade games had featured recognizable characters that were more than simple paddle, car, tank, or rocket ship shapes (such as TV Basketball (MIdway, 1974), Western Gun/Gun Fight (Taito/Midway, 1975), and Circus (Exidy, 1977)). Tomohiro Nishikado's Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) aliens are recognizble as different sea creatures (octopus, crab, and squid). However, none of these earlier characters would be considered to be "cartoony" or "cute" (although the crab space invader is generally considered to be "the cute one").
Cutie Q is probably the earliest example of a "character game"* with intentionally cartoony and cute (it's right there in the name) figures. This concept served as direct influence on Iwatani's next game with Namco, Pac-Man.
Cutie Q Visuo-Spatial Analysis: The game screen emulates an orthographic view of a bagatelle-style playfield, but there is no real sense of gravity to understand which way is "down." The player could be looking down at a plan view of the playfield (like a pinball machine) or across at an elevation view (like a vertically-mounted pachinko machine). The character images are shown in orthographic front and side elevation views, the best way to show character details on a tiny 16 x 16 one-bit-per-pixel (1BPP, i.e. a two-color palette) sprite. The game has a sense of continuous 2-D game space limited to a single screen (fixed frame).
* The term "character game" is also a term used for Japanese "simulation games" (what we call board-and-counter wargames in the west) that are based on manga and anime series. For more on this topic, you should see my other blog for articles and translations I've made of various Japanese sci-fi and anime games (and one German one).
[addendum 6 August 2026]
Head On
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| Head On (Gremlin, 1979) |
The American SEGA subsidiary studio Gremlin created Head On (1979), an arcade hit in the relatively untapped genre of maze games. The game Gremlin designer Lane Hauck said the idea for the game "just came to him," not citing any other game as a particular inspiration.
The player controls their car with a four-direction joystick rather than the typical steering wheel and gas pedal used in many driving games of the era. There is no finish line to race to. Instead, the player must drive over and clear all the "lane markers" (dots) in the road maze before an erratic, computer-controlled enemy car can smash into you. The cars are locked into 4-way orthogonal movement along the road lanes but can briefly move diagonally to change lanes at intersections. This is more limited than the precision steering and 32-way movement of a game like Gran Trak (Atari, 1974), but simplifies the game and allows for split-second gameplay. The player doesn't have to worry about scraping against a road barrier and spinning out while they concentrate on the enemy car out to crash "head on" into them.
Head On plays differently from the few earlier maze game examples. In Gotcha (Atari, 1973), players use 4-way movement to chase each other in a shifting maze with wide passages (diagonal movement seems to be restricted to the "attract mode" between games). The Amazing Maze Game (Midway, 1976) locks the player into narrow orthogonal "lanes" like Head On, but the goal is to go from start to finish faster than a computer-controlled character can solve the maze from finish to start. The two characters do not interact if they collide with each other. Head On may be the first game where the goal is to explore the entire environment, rather than to reach a singular goal (tag the other player in Gotcha, reach the finish line in The Amazing Maze Game).
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| Sales flyer for Nintendo's licensed Head On N (1979) |
Gremlin was purchased by SEGA Enterprises (an American company at the time... the story of SEGA is a long and complicated one) shortly before Head On debuted. SEGA also published the game through its Japanese subsidiary and it soon became a big hit overseas. Japanese demand was so high that SEGA licensed the game to other companies like IREM and Nintendo, who released a tabletop version as Head On N (see above).
Head On served as a template for early home games like Dodge 'Em (Atari, 1980) for Atari VCS, Tunnels of Fahad (Adventure International, 1980) for TRS-80 computers, and Car Wars (Texas Instruments, 1981) for TI-99 computers. Some of the more creative derivations in the arcades include Side Trak (Exidy, 1979), Space Chaser (Taito, 1979), Targ (Exidy, 1980), and Fast Lane (Konami, 1987).
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| Battle Course 4 from Super Mario Kart (Nintendo, 1992) |
Evidence of Head On's influence on the racing game genre can be found in the Battle Course 4 map from Super Mario Kart (above), which was also included as a "retro course" in Mario Kart Wii (2008).
Head On Visuo-Spatial Analysis: The game uses a plan orthographic view of a roadway maze and the cars driving in it. It uses a continuous spatial model of a 2-D game space restricted to a single screen (fixed frame).
[end addendum 6 August 2026]
Pac-Man
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| Pac-Man screen shot |
Iwatani's next game, Pac-Man (Namco, 1980) abandoned ball-and-paddle gameplay and seems like an evolution of the Head On formula: drive over all the dots in a narrow-lane, orthogonal maze while avoiding collisions. Pac-Man-Man, of course, replaces the act of driving with eating as the titular character devours his way through each maze. Bonus point edibles include fruits like cherries, strawberries, and oranges, their graphics reminding the player of "fruit machine" (a.k.a. slot machine) reel images.
Pac-Man is pursued by four ghostly, large-eyed monsters that look like they evolved from Cutie Q's pink minimons. Pac-Man features a technical leap past Cutie Q's graphics capabilities: the multicolored monsters and bonus items feature two-bit-per-pixel (2BPP, 4 colors, including transparency) sprites. Iwatani designed his monsters to be "cute," with big expressive eyes that look ahead in the direction they are moving.
The game also included some of the first "cutscenes" seen in a digital game.
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| Pac-Man first intermission |
Pac-Man includes three intermissions that play after mazes 2, 5, and 9. These are short and humorous "cartoons" that reward the player with short breaks between rounds. This is further evidence of bringing visuals from animation into digital games.
Pac-Man Visuo-Spatial Analysis: The game screen emulates an orthographic plan view of a maze (not unlike a hedge maze) seen from overhead. It could be argued that the maze is seen from the side, but the lack of gravity that pulls to the bottom of the screen (this is not a platformer) and similarity to overhead driving games like Head On support a view from above. The character images are shown in orthographic front and side elevation views, much like in Cutie Q. This creates an incongruity between characters and their environment, one that I wrote about before (see the Orthographic Projection section). The game has a sense of continuous 2-D game space limited to a single screen (fixed frame) with a cylindrical topology (characters may move directly from one edge of the maze to the other by using the side tunnels).
