Friday, April 19, 2024

A to Z Challenge: Q-Bert

 As I've said before, a lot of old video games had pretty nonsensical stories.  Take Q-Bert, where you guide a weird orange critter around 3D boards by hopping up, down, and sideways.

The big deal about the game at the time was the 3D design of the boards.  They start out as basically stacks of cubes and you have to guide Q-Bert around to touch them all.  But there are other critters like snakes who will untouch the cubes so you have to go back and retouch them until you have them all.  Like Joust it's a weird game but the simplicity makes it fun to play.

In the picture you can see some rules/tips to sort of explain the game.  Why anyone would think this up, I have no idea.

While I'm pretty sure there was some merchandising for Q-Bert in the 80s, the character didn't become a lasting cultural icon like Pac-Man, Mario, or Sonic.  You can probably still find the game to play on your phone or knockoff game systems.

3 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I never played the actual game, but I used Q-Bert for Q for the very first Challenge.

Christopher Dilloway said...

Poor ol' Q-Bert made a cameo in "Wreck-It Ralph" so he hasn't been completely forgotten to history (yet), but, yeah, he never got the recognition of Pac-man or Mario. And he makes for an easy Q entry for the list...so there's that lol

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

I was never any good at QBert. I always fell off the pyramid and plummeted to death (or whatever).

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