Q*bert
A hopping orange creature with a long nose who curses in unintelligible gibberish — Q*bert is one of the cutest and at the same time most original characters of the golden age of arcades. The game by Gottlieb from 1982 brought an idea no one had seen until then: gameplay built on an isometric pyramid of cubes.
The task is deceptively simple. Q*bert hops across a pyramid made of cubes and with each landing changes the color of their top surface. The goal is to recolor all the cubes, but while doing so you must dodge enemies — the bouncing snake Coily, balls and other critters — and not fall off the edge into the void. The diagonal controls, which don't correspond to the joystick's usual directions, make the game a pleasantly brain-twisting challenge.
The home port on the Atari 2600 faced the tough task of translating the isometric perspective onto very modest hardware. Although it had to give up part of the arcade machine's visual richness, it preserved the basic magic and addictiveness of the source and was among the titles that broadened the genre variety of the console's library.
Q*bert quickly became a pop culture icon. His distinctive design and cute cursing earned him his own animated series, toys and countless references — decades later the little character even appeared in the film Wreck-It Ralph 2 and in the comedy Pixels. Few arcade games achieved such broad cultural reach.
The combination of an original mechanic, an instantly recognizable hero and high difficulty secured Q*bert a firm place among the classics of the eighties. It is a title that proves innovation in game design doesn't have to mean just more shooting and enemies.
Why play: An original hopping puzzle with an unforgettable character — a diagonal challenge that tests both brain and fingers and charms with its charisma.
Game 17 of 69 for Atari 2600
The same title elsewhere (2)
The Gottlieb arcade cabinet had its own speech-synthesis chip, letting Q*bert curse in those gibberish speech bubbles with actual voice, while rendering the pyramid as shaded, colored cubes that gave the image real depth. The Atari 2600 version, limited to the TIA sound chip's two channels and a thin color palette, had to drop the speech entirely — the character just beeps — and the cubes appear flat, without shading. It still ranks among the better conversions of its day: the jumping and pacing survive intact, only the visuals and audio fall short of the arcade board. To hear Q*bert's real mumbling, the arcade version is the one to seek out.
