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Q*bert

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For the DJ, see DJ Q-bert.
For the Futurama character, see Cubert Farnsworth.
Q*bert
Q*bert screenshot
Developer(s)Gottlieb
Publisher(s)Gottlieb
Designer(s)Warren Davis
Platform(s)
Release1982
Genre(s)Platform
Mode(s)Up to 2 players, alternating turns

Q*bert is a 1982 arcade game from Gottlieb, created by Warren Davis. It features a main character of the same name. Q*bert was one of the most famous faces of the Golden age of arcade games and also one of the most bizarre. It is well known as one of the better Pac Man clones and is known for, like its predecessor, not incorporating violence into the game but is still fun to many. The character was a furry orange orb with two eyes, two feet and one long snout.

Description

Designed with a nod to M.C. Escher, Q*bert's playing field is an isometric projection of a pyramid-like structure of tri-colored cubes. Q's purpose in life is to hop around the tops of these cubes, changing every square to a specific color (e.g., from blue to yellow). On early levels, this is as simple as a single hop on each square, but later rounds become more challenging; cubes have to be touched twice, cubes change back to the wrong color if they get hopped on again, etc. In the original arcade machine, if the Q*bert character hopped off the edge of the pyramid of cubes, he would fall to his death with a loud mechanically produced *plonk* sound (often what one hears on a pinball machine when a free game was awarded) at floor level.

Making the task even more difficult is the assortment of odd baddies who menace or jinx Q*bert's every move. "Coily" the snake appears at the top of the pyramid inside a purple ball, bouncing toward the bottom of the screen. Once he hits the bottom row of cubes, the snake springs out from inside, hopping around in pursuit of our little orange friend. Red balls also appear at the top of the pyramid, bringing bouncing death if they collide with Q*bert on the way down.

Other threats come from "Ugg" and "Wrongway," two purple gremlins who bounce along the side of the cubes. Additionally, Q has to deal with "Slick" and "Sam," two green mischief making pineapples who turn cubes back to their original color when they hop on them.

Aside from some strategic hopping, Q*bert's only defenses are the spinning discs at the side of the pyramid and the green balls that bounce across the squares. The discs provide a quick escape, floating Q back to the top of the pyramid as Coily jumps to his death in pursuit. The green balls are time freezers, giving Q*bert a free run of the pyramid for a limited time.

Q*bert's simple gameplay and controls (one joystick, no buttons) made the game a hit among all age groups. An animated cartoon merchandizing tie-in debuted on CBS' Saturday Supercade, with the orange furball now sporting arms, a mouth and a high school letterman's jacket. All of Q*Bert's friends and enemies were also featured in the cartoon, along with some "show-only" characters that had never appeared in the games. The setting of the segment in the Saturday Supercade was "Q-Burg". One notable feature about the cartoon segment was that it was the only segment in the entire show that used the game's original sound effects. The cute, but "foul-mouthed" star (who muttered an unintelligible “@!#?@!” with every lost life) was a natural for the merchandising world, and stores soon stocked up on Q*bert dolls, lunchboxes, sleeping bags, and more. A board game and a card game were also created.

Q*bert's Qubes

Aftermath and Legacy

The video game crash of 1983 brought an end to Q*bert's reign. The collapsed market delivered a death blow to Q*bert's arcade sequel, Q*bert's Qubes. (The game was retitled Q*bert II when it was ported to the Colecovision.) While retaining the iconic pyramid field of play, Q*bert's Qubes added further challenges to gameplay by scattering the cubes into separate space. Now, when Q*bert hopped off, the cubes actually rotated to a new side, shifting in the direction of Q*bert's jump.

These new touches failed to generate much interest in a depressed market. Few Q*bert's Qubes machines even made it to the public, and the character's arcade career was over. A third arcade game was also under development in 1983, but never made it out of the prototype stage. In-house, it was called "Faster Harder More Challenging Q*bert". [1]

In 1983, Gottlieb created a Q*bert themed four-flipper pinball table called Q*bert's Quest. The table was unusual in that the bottom two flippers were inverted in an upside-down 'V' fashion. The game reused sounds taken from in the Q*bert arcade game, as well as a spoken sample from Q*bert itself: a squeaky "Bye Bye" when the game concluded.

Q*bert was also featured in the cartoon Saturday Supercade, though it has only tangential similarities to the game's premise. The characters are depicted as a 60's society of multiple "Q*berts" (the main Q*bert character was identifiable by his orange color and jacket). Enemies such as Coily and Ugg serve as the neighborhood bullies.

Q*bert remained available in home system conversions and in the Super Nintendo's Q*bert 3. Games inspired by Q*bert include Pogo Joe for the Commodore 64 and Bert: The Rise and Fall of a Swedish Politician for the Macintosh Classic. Another related game was the 1998 pseudo-sequel for the PC entitled "Q*Bob," although this featured a more humanoid character.

Sproingies, a popular plugin for the XScreenSaver program, is a three-dimensional animation in the style of Q*bert. It consists of an infinite staircase of Q*bert cubic blocks, down which several coilies race. When they collide both explode, and two new coilies join the race.

Q*bert got an extra life on the Game Boy Color and PlayStation, with releases of the original game. The PS version featured new graphics. Q*bert remains one of the most serviceable and well-known characters of the early 1980s arcade.

Cabinet

Dedicated upright cabinets for Q*bert contain a solenoid that creates a knocking sound inside the cabinet whenever a character falls off the pyramid, simulating the sound a character might make if it actually fell to the bottom of the cabinet.

Ports

Q*bert was ported to numerous home systems and was remade several times. In 1983, it was ported by Parker Brothers to ColecoVision, Intellivision, Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and the Commodore 64. In 1989, Q*bert was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System by Ultra Games, a division of Konami. In 1992, it was ported to the Game Boy. In 1999 a PlayStation version was released. 2000 saw the release of new versions for Windows and Dreamcast. Q*bert is also one of the three standard games on the Sony Ericsson T610 and T630 mobile phones, published by Sony and available on a variety of handsets. Some were ports of the original code, others complete re-writes of the game.

There is a reference to Q*bert in the Family Guy episode "Stuck Together, Torn Apart."

An animated version of Q*bert appears in the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest II." Furthermore, Professor Hubert Farnsworth's clone is named Cubert.

Q*bert inspired hip-hopper Richard Quitevis' stage name, DJ Q-bert.

Cletus Spuckler, a character in The Simpsons has a child named Q-bert.

System Of A Down has a song called "CUBErt" on their self-titled debut album. (Reportedly, the song is supposed to be titled "Q-Bert", but is instead called "CUBErt" be due to copyright issues.)

A heavily modified sound sample from Q-Bert can be heard in the introduction of Earthsuit's song, "Against the Grain".

In the GCN game Baten Kaitos, after a certain puzzle is completed, the room one is in turns into a pyramid of cubes with monsters hopping up and down the sides, a la Q*bert.

In the Channel 102 series Gemberling (episode 4), the main character Gemberling gets attacked by a Q-Bert

In the 1984 film, Moscow on the Hudson, the Q*bert arcade game is featured briefly, with a close up of Q*bert jumping off the pyramid.

In the 1980's sitcom "Silver Spoons" a Q-bert machine is prominantly display in the arcade room of the house belonging to the main characters.

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