Q*bert is a 1982 arcade game published by Gottlieb, created by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee. In Q*bert, the player maneuvers the eponymous character around an isometric pyramid-like structure of tri-colored cubes. Q*bert's purpose is to hop around the tops of these cubes, changing every square to a specific color (e.g., from blue to yellow).
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 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.
Q*bert is harassed by an assortment of enemies. "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 the little orange hero. 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 "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.
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*bert back to the top of the pyramid as Coily jumps to his death in pursuit. The green balls freeze the enemies, giving Q*bert a free run of the pyramid for a limited time.
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 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, I'm turned on" when the game is booted up, and "Bye-bye" whenever you get a Game Over.
Dedicated upright cabinets for Q*bert contain a pinball "knocker" (a solenoid that creates a knocking sound) inside the cabinet whenever a character falls off the pyramid, simulating the sound that a character might make if it actually fell to the bottom of the cabinet. In some units, this sound is created by a bean bag inside the case rigged to fall. This resulted in more of a "thud" than the distinctive "pop" created by the knocker-equipped cabinets.
Q*bert was one of the characters featured on Saturday Supercade. 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 In Which a Trope Is Described. A home sequel, Q*bert 3, was later released for Super NES. In 2012, Disney released Wreck-It Ralph, which gave Q*bert a prominent role in the film. He also has a brief appearance in its sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Of the many, many
◊ home ports of Q*bert, the MSX and NES versions were developed by Konami. The MSX version, however, starred a different-looking Q*bert that was more pudgy and reptilian, similar to the design of the dragons from Bubble Bobble. Its gameplay was based on Q*bert's Qubes, but it was perhaps more valued for the bonuses it gave to other Konami games when the cartridge was plugged into the second slot.
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 Pixels.
Legendary turntablist DJ Qbert got his name from this series.
Q*bert contains examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Q*Bertha in FHMC Q*Bert, to the extent that she takes on Coily's role in the latter levels and will cost Q*Bert a life if she catches him. Averted in her later appearance in Q*bert: Rebooted, where she gains a fair bit of Adaptational Attractiveness and is shown as more of a Distaff Counterpart.
- Animated Adaptation: As part of Saturday Supercade.
- Bottomless Pits: Audibly averted. If Q*bert, Coily, or Q*Bertha jump off the pyramid, they fall until the player hears either a "splat" or the arcade cabinet's knocker.
- Canon Immigrant: A borderline case: thirty-one years after the cartoon, a character named Q*tee was added to 2014's Q*bert Rebooted as an unlockable skin, but she looks entirely different from Supercade's version of Q*tee, and she's Q*bert's sister rather than his girlfriend.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Somewhat. Of the game's moving objects, anything that's 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).
- Also, the cubes' platforms fit into this vein as well.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The non-standard joystick - all diagonal moves instead of up/down/left/rightnote - 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 pad. 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.
- Determinator: Coily. Once he appears, he'll hunt Q*Bert down without ever stopping unless you give him a Disney Villain Death. Same goes with Q*Bertha in FHMC Q*Bert.
- Disney Villain Death: If you jump onto a disc and ride it back to the top of the stage, if Coily is right behind you as you leap on, he'll jump after you and fall to his death, until he respawns later.
- Downer Ending: The NES version ends with Coily sneaking up on Q*Bert after all the congratulatory messages for beating all the levels.
- The '80s: The era in which this game was created in.
- Every 10,000 Points: Extra lives are for the arcade game are first issued at 8,000 points, then every additional 14,000 afterwardnote .
- The NES port slightly alters this to 6,000 and every additional 12,000note .
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Faster Harder More Challenging Q*Bert lives up to its name:
- The first four rounds progress through the complications of the first four levels in the original game. That is, the second stage of FHMC made you jump on each cube twice (like the second set of stages in the original), and so on. Level 1, Round 4 of FHMC Q*Bert was as difficult as Level 4, Round 1 (the thirteenth round) of the original.
- Level 2 now features new behavior for Slick and Sam: they don't change the colors back, they instead lock 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 3 replaces Coily with Q*Bertha, a female Q*Bert who just wants to love him to death. In addition to chasing Q*Bert, she changes the colors of the cubes back as she follows you around. Slick and Sam do not appear in Level 3.
- Level 4 brings Slick and Sam back. Now you have to lure Q*Bertha over the rainbow squares while trying to keep her from undoing too much of the rest of the pyramid. This pattern keeps up for a while, long enough that you think it's not going to change, and then...
- Level 7 now has Slick and Sam lock 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.
- Level 8: That bright side? Gone.
- On top of all that, the flying discs don't stay in one place. If you want to temporarily get rid of Coily or Q*Bertha, you have to make sure you're not jumping into empty air because a disc just moved. The only consolation here is that discs reappear after being used.
- To make matters even more pressing, each flying disk used subtracts points from the end-of-level bonus.
- Good luck! You'll need it!
- Fake Difficulty: When playing Rebooted on a PlayStation console, don't expect Q*bert to go in the direction you think you're pointing him towards. Sometimes he'll even go the completely opposite direction as well, especially after falling off the stage, costing 2 lives in less than a second.
- The PC version also has terrible controls with a gamepad, but it works fine with a mouse.
- Fake Longevity: Rebooted has 40 levels consisting of 3 rounds and Stars to unlock later levels are earned by completing 1 of 3 challenges: Beating the level, clearing the level under a certain time, and reaching a particular score. However, only 1 of these stars can be earned at a time, requiring each level to be completed a minimum of 3 times.
- Gonk: Q*Bertha in FHMC Q*Bert. She is an extremely obese member of Q*Bert's species with messy hairs sprouting upwards on her head.
- Happy Fun Ball: Happy Fun Red Balls: Your main enemy.
- Coily's "egg" resembles a a larger, purple ball. The smaller green balls meanwhile are helpful collectables.
- Invincibility Power-Up: Green balls not only freezes Q*bert's enemies, they also allow him to slip by them unharmed.
- Isometric Projection
- Jerkass: Slick and Sam, undoing all your hard work. In FHMC Q*Bert, they're even worse. And in Rebooted there's no limit to how many of them can be on the screen at once!
- Loads and Loads of Loading: For a game that only takes less than 600 megabytes, Reloaded definitely takes a long time to load a level. There's even a noticeable pause in the action whenever a jewel appears on the screen.
- Lucky Charms Title
- No Plot? No Problem!: Well, you've got this weird little fellow hopping on the blocks on a pyramid, changing their color, while equally weird guys try to stop him. Why? Do you need a reason?
- Oh, Crap!: Two versions:
- When Q*bert collides with an enemy, he has a speech bubble that reads "@!#?@!".**
- When Coily goes off the edge, he gives an electronic cry.
- Pinball Spin-Off: Q*Bert's Quest, also by Gottlieb, released in 1983.
- Punny Name: The title Q*bert refers to the protagonist's name and also contains the word "cube", alluding to the playfield full of cubes. Q*bert himself also resembles the letter Q.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Coily. So much that he's even the Big Bad of the 1999 game.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: After all of your efforts getting Q*bert through all 36 pyramids in the NES version, Coily catches up to and kills him offscreen.
- Speaking Simlish: Q*Bert speaks this way due to the developers getting frustrated with the API of the Votrax chip.
- Symbol Swearing: Whenever Q*bert gets hit by something or jumps off the edge of the play field (the latter only in FHMC and Qubes).
- Synthetic Voice Actor: The game has a Votrax SC-01 speech synthesizer on-board. But 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.
- The Unpronounceable: Some early versions of the game shipped with "@!#?@!" as the game's actual title. This was quickly changed for obvious reasons.
- Time Stands Still: Grab a Green ball and this happens.
- Try and Follow: Luring Coily to his doom by jumping onto a disc.
