History Videogame / QBert

* [[HappyFunBall Happy Fun Red Balls]]: Your main enemy.

* SuperStar: Green balls not only freezes Q*bert's enemies, they also allow him to slip by them unharmed.

''Q*bert'''s use of sound was one of its most distinctive features. The game's sound board contained a Votrax speech synthesis chip, but according to David Thiel, who created the sounds for the game, the chip's output was so poor that some words were not understandable. In frustration, he programmed it to produce random phonemes, and discovered that the result sounded like an [[StarfishLanguage alien language]]. This randomized speech, played at different pitches, became the voices of Ugg, Wrongway, Slick, Sam, and Q*bert himself. Sometimes if you're lucky, you'll get a cuss word from random babble. The only actual words that remain are "Hello" when the game is booted up, and "Bye-bye" whenever you get a GameOver.

* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: Somewhat. Of the game's moving objects, anything green (Slick, Sam, and the Green Ball) is safe to touch. Most dangerous things are purple (Coily, Wrongway, Ugg, and, in the unreleased sequel, Q*Bertha), but some are red (the Red Balls).
* DamnYouMuscleMemory: The non-standard joystick - all diagonal moves instead of up/down/left/right - can take some getting used to.
** It gets worse if you switch from playing the arcade version to the home version where all the diagonal moves are mapped to left, right, up, and down on the control stick. Fortunately with the NES version, the controls can be remapped to the diagonal positions on the D-pad, which is only preferable if you're using a control stick.

* FanNickname: Coily is sometimes known as Carrot Ends (alternately spelled Carrot Ens) because the ends of him look like two pink carrots rather than the head and tail of a snake and the noise he makes sounds like "carrot ends, carrot ends..." in the Atari 2600 version.

* SyntheticVoiceActor: The game has a Votrax SC-01 speech synthesizer on-board. Averted however in that the developers were frustrated with the chip's complicated API to the point where they gave up after just two phrases (one heard when the game is powered on, another after one enters their initials in the high score screen) and the rest of the programming consists of the chip spouting gibberish.

In 2014, ''Q*bert Rebooted'' was released. It contains the original arcade game, and a new game with 3D graphics. The major change is that Q*bert walks in hexagonal shapes instead of cubes. The revival of the character was motivated by his appearance in ''Wreck-it Ralph'', and he would later gain another prominent appearance in film in 2015's ''Film/{{Pixels}}''.

Other threats come from "Ugg" and "Wrong-Way," a purple pig and gremlin team who bounce along the side of the cubes. Additionally, Q*bert has to deal with "Slick" and "Sam," two green creatures who turn cubes back to their original color when they hop on them. Q*bert can eliminate Slick or Sam by jumping onto them.

* PinballSpinoff: ''[[Pinball/QBertsQuest Q*Bert's Quest]]'', also by Gottlieb, released in 1983.

The "changing the cube colors" idea came quite late in game development. Davis and Lee had implemented the pyramid level and enemies, but were unsure of what the Q*bert's goal would be. It was Ron Waxman, vice president of engineering at Gottlieb, who suggested having the cubes change color when the player landed on them.

* SyntheticVoiceActor: The game has a Votrax SC-01 speech synthesizer on-board. Averted however in that the developers were frustrated with the chip's complicated API to the point where they gave up after just two phrases (one heard when the game is powered on, another after one enters their initial in the high score screen) and the rest of the programming consists of the chip spouting gibberish.

* SpeakingSimlish

''Q*bert'' was one of the characters featured on ''WesternAnimation/SaturdaySupercade''. The game has a follow-up called ''Q*bert's Qubes'' and an unreleased sequel called ''Faster Harder More Challenging Q*bert'', a case of InWhichATropeIsDescribed. A home sequel, ''Q*bert 3'', was later released for Super NES. In 2012, Creator/{{Disney}} released ''Film/WreckItRalph'', which gave Q*bert a prominent role in the film.

** It gets worse if you switch from playing the arcade version to the home version where all the diagonal moves are mapped to left, right, up, and down on the control stick. Fortunately with the NES version, the controls can be remapped to the diagonal positions on the D-pad.

** It gets worse if you switch from playing the arcade version to the home version where all the diagonal moves are mapped to left, right, up, and down on the control stick.

* TheUnpronounceable: Some early versions of the game shipped with "@!#?@!" as the game's actual title. Needless to say, this was quickly changed for obvious reasons.

* DummiedOut: None of the UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum ports had the safe-to-touch [=NPCs=], as it would not have been feasible to colour them green.[[note:*:It might have been possible, but only by precise interrupt-driven attribute switching in sync with the [=TV=] scan, which would probably have slowed down the game too much.]]. With the exception of ''Pogo'', most of them did not have Ugg or Wrong-Way either.

* SymbolSwearing: Whenever Q*bert gets hit by something or jumps off the edge of the play field (the later only in ''FHMC'' and ''Qubes'').

''Q*bert'''s use of sound was one of its most distinctive features. The game's sound board contained a Votrax speech synthesis chip, but according to David Thiel, who created the sounds for the game, the chip's output was so poor that some words were not understandable. In frustration, he programmed it to produce random phonemes, and discovered that the result sounded like an [[StarfishLanguage alien language]]. This randomized speech, played at different pitches, became the voices of Ugg, Wrongway, Slick, Sam, and Q*bert himself. Sometimes if you're lucky, you'll get a cuss word from random babble. The only actual word that remains is "Bye-bye" whenever you get a GameOver.

Of the many, ''[[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/qbert_crash.JPG many]]'' home ports of ''Q*bert'', the MSX and NES versions were developed by Creator/{{Konami}}. The MSX version, however, starred a different-looking Q*bert that was more pudgy and reptilian, similar to the designs of the dragons from ''Videogame/BubbleBobble''. Its gameplay was based on ''Q*bert's Qubes'', but it was perhaps more valued for the [[OldSaveBonus bonuses it gave to other Konami games when the cartridge was plugged into the second slot]].

Of the many, ''[[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/qbert_crash.JPG many]]'' home ports of ''Q*bert'', the MSX and NES versions were developed by Creator/{{Konami}}. The MSX version, however, starred a different-looking Q*bert that was more reptilian; its gameplay was based on ''Q*bert's Qubes'', but it was perhaps more valued for the [[OldSaveBonus bonuses it gave to other Konami games when the cartridge was plugged into the second slot]].

Of the many, ''[[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/qbert_crash.JPG many]]'' home ports of ''Q*bert'', the MSX and NES versions were developed by Creator/{{Konami}}. The MSX version, however, starred a different-looking Q*bert with a long tail instead of a long nose; its gameplay was based on ''Q*bert's Qubes'', but it was perhaps more valued for the [[OldSaveBonus bonuses it gave to other Konami games when the cartridge was plugged into the second slot]].

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: To an extent. Of the game's moving objects, anything green (Slick, Sam, and the Green Ball) is safe to touch. Most dangerous things are purple (Coily, Wrongway, Ugg, and, in the unreleased sequel, Q*Bertha), but some are red (the Red Balls).

* {{Determinator}}: Coily

** Level 2 now features new behavior for Slick and Sam: they don't change the colors back, they instead turn cubes into a rainbow color that you can't change, and you have to lure Coily over them to reset them to their original color.

** Level 7 now has Slick and Sam turn squares black. You have to lure Q*Bertha onto such squares ''twice'' to change them back to normal. The only bright side is that Q*Bert himself can't change the square's colors back on this level.

* SymbolSwearing: Whenever Q*bert gets hit by something.