Who hasn’t heard of Q*Bert? Don’t take that as an insult though, rather it’s to say that Q*Bert is such a well-known arcade game character that it’s kind of a challenge to not know who he is. Now, what exactly Q*Bert is though is a bit of a difficult question to answer. Q*Bert is best described as a being featured in a 2D puzzle world who, for some reason always speaks in curse words (or so it appears). Now, before we say any more about the actual game let’s get into where exactly the game came from or it’s history.
Table of Contents
Video of Q*bert gameplay
History
The idea for Q*Bert came to fruition in the year 1982 and was originally produced by Gottlieb to be sold in the American market. The actual, hands-on creators of the game, Jeff Lee and Warren Davis designed everything for Q*Bert, such as the Q*Bert himself and the concept for the game. However, Davis also took the game and developed it a bit more once the base concept was written down. Directly after Q*Bert was released the company, Gottlieb, knew they had a hit on their hands.
*in fact, the game was so popular that it was recognized as being one of the pinnacle games of the golden age of arcade games.
Since the game was developed while Columbia Pictures still owned Gottlieb, Columbia still owns the intellectual rights to Q*Bert as well.
Gameplay
To make Q*Bert’s gameplay a bit more straightforward it was designed with a 4-way joystick. The game starts with Q*Bert mounted on top of a pyramid of 28 cubes which he navigates around by jumping diagonally from cube to cube. Every time Q*Bert lands on a cube, it changes colors. If every cube on the pyramid changes to the desired or target color you/Q*Bert are allowed to progress to the next level.
At first, all you’ll have to do to progress will be to jump on each cube in the pyramid just once. However, as you progress through the game you’ll find that you’ll have to jump on each cube in the pyramid 2x to get them to reach the desired color. There will also be times when cubes will change colors each time Q*Bert lands on them (rather than staying the desired color after it’s reached). These 2 different things will combine as the game reaches it’s later stages, basically making everything about the game that much more difficult.
Also, did I mention that if you jump off of the pyramid you’ll die? Yeah, don’t forget that.
As the game goes on you’ll find yourself being bombarded by several different enemies. The names of these enemies are listed below.
Multiple hints
*if you run into a purple enemy you can die, it’s fatal. On the other hand, if you run into a green character they are removed from the screen a soon as you touch them.
*You will occasionally see colored balls appear at the 2nd level of cubes – they’ll bounce downwards toward the bottom of the pyramid. Making contact with a red ball will kill you/Q*Bert. Making contact with a green ball will freeze all enemies on the screen for a few seconds.
*you will see multicolored floating discs on both sides of the pyramid that will help you evade certain types of danger, for instance, the snake, Coily. Jumping on one of the multicolored discs will transport Q*Bert to the top of the pyramid immediately. Coily will occasionally be very close to Q*Bert as he jumps to the disc – if he jumps after you (and he likely will) he’ll end up falling to his death, which will give you bonus points.
*you will recieve points for every color change that happes. They are allotted as so:
- 500 points for killing Coily with a flying disc
- 25 points for each color change
- 50-100 points for each disc that’s left at the end of a stage
- 100 points for catching green balls
- 300 points for catching either Slick or Sam
- Bonus points are awarded for completing each screen (every subsequent level after the first one is an extra 250 on top of the 1000 points)
- You receive extra lives for reaching certain scores
Enemies
- Ugg and Wrongway: These are 2 purple creatures who hop along the sides of the cubes. They start at the bottom left of the right corner of the pyramid and move forward to either the left or right sides of the top of the pyramid and basically jump off once they reach the top.
- Sam and Slick: These are 2 green enemies who move down the pyramid and change cubes back to their original color.
- Coily: When you first see Coily it’ll appear as a purple egg that constantly goes to the bottom of the pyramid and once there changes to a snake that will chase after Q*Bert.
To play the game online you can go here
Q*Bert Fun Facts
- There were several arcade units that were released with the iconic @!#?@! On the side – they’re known as the “swearing marquees”
- The title of the game is actually a mixture of the words Cubes and Hubert hence the name Q*Bert
- The original title of the game Q*Bert had a hyphen instead of an asterisk in it (like Q-Bert). The art director decided that it was a good idea to make the change to an asterisk but, now regrets it because of search engines using the asterisk as a wild card.
- There were 3 different cabinets for Q*Bert. These designs were: a cabaret, co*cktail version, and a standard version.
- Q*Bert sold 25000 units which makes it Gottlieb’s most successful game
Conclusion
Now there you have it – all you need to know about Q*Bert. Of course, if there’s information that has been omitted you can check the resources listed below – they’ll cover any holes we may have left. After you do that all that’s next is to actually play the game. Check it out, you may like it.
The information in this article was taken from Wikipedia
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