Q*bert
| Q*bert | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Gottlieb |
| Publisher(s) | Gottlieb |
| Designer(s) | Warren Davis |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release | October 1982 |
| Genre(s) | Puzzle, action |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, alternating two-player |
Q*bert is an arcade game made by Gottlieb, a pinball manufacturer owned by Columbia Pictures, and released in October 1982. The player hops a long-nosed creature down a pyramid of cubes seen in isometric view, and every cube it lands on changes color. The game was designed and programmed by Warren Davis, with graphics by Jeff Lee and sound by David Thiel.[1][2] It is one of two games named in the design brief for the planned game Poop of the Gods by Molecular Reality Corporation.
Gameplay
The pyramid has 28 cubes. The joystick is a four-way stick turned a quarter of the way round, so that its four directions run diagonally, and each push sends Q*bert one cube down or up along a diagonal. A hop onto a cube changes its top to the target color, and the first change is worth 15 points where a change to the final color is worth 25. In the first level one hop does it, in the second two are needed, and from the third level a cube that is already finished changes again if the player hops on it a second time. Stepping off the edge of the pyramid costs a life, except onto a flying disc beside it, which carries Q*bert back to the top.[1]
Enemies drop in from the top. A purple ball hatches into Coily, a snake that chases Q*bert and can be lured off the edge for 500 points. Two green characters, Slick and Sam, undo the player's work, and hopping onto one earns 300 points. A green ball is worth 100. At the end of a round the player is paid a bonus of 750 points plus 250 times the round number plus 50 for each disc left. The game has nine levels of four rounds each, and the ninth repeats.[1]
Development
Davis wrote an account of the game in which he says that programming began around April 1982 and the game was put on the schedule for June or July, and that it took about four months. A colleague had made a screen of cubes arranged in a hexagon, and Davis turned it into a pyramid with balls bouncing down it. Lee had earlier proposed a character that shot snot, and the working title of the game was "The Cube Game".[3] The name came from "Cube" and "Hubert", which became "Q-bert". Lee admired the drawings of M. C. Escher.[1]
Lee drew each character on a grid of 16 by 16 pixels, one pixel at a time, and the snake Coily was made of two such blocks. Thiel made Q*bert's speech from random phonemes produced by a speech chip, so that it is gibberish. According to Davis, the only phrases programmed in were "Hello, I'm turned on" when the machine started and "Bye-bye" at the end of a game.[3] The chip was a Votrax SC-01, and the processor an Intel 8086 at 5 MHz.[1]
Cabinet and legacy
The cabinet carried a part from a pinball machine. When an enemy is lured off the pyramid and falls, a pinball knocker thumps, as the reviewer notes, "to complete the effect".[4] A sequel, Faster Harder More Challenging Q*bert, was made but not released in arcades.[4]
Influence on Poop of the Gods
The design brief for Poop of the Gods in the memo Early Releases on Maxine's Quest (about 2022) reads "Style: Tempest meets Qbert but with giant alien space-gods who poop." The memo spells the title without the asterisk.[5] Tempest is the first game in the formula. The memo does not say what the company took from either.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e "Q*bert (1982)". Arcade History. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Q*bert". Killer List of Videogames. International Arcade Museum. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b Warren Davis. "The Creation of Q*Bert". Coinop.org. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b "Q*bert (1982 Arcade) and Faster Harder More Challenging Q*bert (Unreleased Arcade) Review". Indie Gamer Chick. December 8, 2023.
- ^ "Early Releases on Maxine's Quest". Molecular Reality Corporation. 2022.