Now that I have it all down on paper, I’ll be the first to admit that this concept sounds utterly ridiculous. In order to win this way, one of the players mounts a slow-moving snail and rides it to their goal. Your team can also have an economic victory by gathering enough berries and bringing them back to your hive before the other team does. In order to win with brute force, your team must destroy the opposing team’s Queen three times. There are three different paths to victory, and only one of them is a military victory. While all of that makes Killer Queen Black sound like nothing more than a deathmatch or battle royale, it’s anything but. The Workers have the ability to take a berry to random chambers on the map that will turn them into Warriors that can also fight. The Queen has the ability to fly as well as attack, while the Workers merely jump and carry berries. Each team is comprised of one “Queen” player and a number of “Workers”. The playing field is a single-screen, two-dimensional platformer arena. If you’ve never had the pleasure of playing the arcade machine (which is very possible, as it’s somewhat rare), the gameplay is deceptively simple.

Now that Killer Queen Black, the home version of the game, has made it to console, I can finally play this at home to my heart’s content. I immediately fell in love with the madness that is this 5-on-5 arcade action. It had two massive screens back-to-back with five sets of controls attached to each. Killer Queenwas different than any other arcade game I had seen. As I perused the seemingly endless amount of pinball tables and upright cabinets from my childhood, I saw an unfamiliar machine.

Not being one to turn down any opportunity to play games and drink beer, I happily complied. While I was there, Mike insisted I get to a barcade called Ground Kontrol. A few years ago, I was visiting my good friend, Mike, in Portland.

How to play killer queen