Q*bert

Q*Bert was one of a seemingly endless spew of cartoons specifically designed to draw kids down to the local video game arcade and bleed them dry of all of their allowance. Or their Granpa's rare quarter collection. In the game, a long nosed orange Pac Man / Muppet mutation struggles to uniform the colors of a series of blocks on a pyramid while avoiding snakes, pygmies and trolls. This premise, like all of the games of the early eighties, doesn't offer a whole lot to a cartoon studio to work with, but that didn't stop whoever pumped this out from trying!

So what we have is a redesigned Q*Bert - now with arms - in what amounts to some kind of bizarre homage to American Graffiti. No, I'm not kidding. Q*Bert, his débutante girl-thing, and the rest of his pals are the clean cut 'good kids', just trying to get by and have fun. But the Snake (SSSpike?) is a crusty greaser type and he and the rest of his gang of baddies like giving Q and his pals thrills at the end of a shining switch-blade!! Okay, not exactly, but you get the idea. Somehow the studio (who apparently decline to take responsibility) work in the whole color changing premise, but gimme a break! It's amazing I remember as much as I do!!! Maybe now I can forget.

In its favor, the actual animation WAS a cut above the vast majority of the crap on at that time.

This is another one of my favorite video games of all time and another childhood gem. "Q Bert" is another one of the very first video games I've played when I was six years old, it's also another video game that came on my birth year. The game to this day is truly a timeless classic as you can pretty much just about get it almost anywhere in any form, let alone has been referenced in a couple of film "Wreck it Ralph" and the under the radar gem "Pixels".

Not much to say, your basically some weird alien being that must make the pyramid a different color by jumping on each block and avoiding all the other weird alien creatures. That's it in a nutshell, yeah, I know a daft idea for a video game but one that works, because despite its colorful weirdness it's simple and straight to the point which to me are the kinds of video games I like the most.

The graphics I think are great, yeah sure 3D graphics are now common place, but you must understand back then it was a totally new concept seeing 3D graphics back then it was just blew my mind at the time because there truly wasn't anything like it. Like the design of the pyramid it's the kind of 3D pyramid you would see in the art books or classes that every dealt in 3D art, but it's cooled all the same because it an object on paper that doesn't look flat, it almost looks as if you could touch it.

I even like the designs of the characters each of them is truly unique and have unique functions. From the snake whom is basically a hopping slinky of death, green flame guys that annoyingly hinder your paint job by paint the blocks with their previous color, some purple gremlins dudes that jump sideways on blocks, the deadly red balls.

But of course QBert himself is the star attraction. He/she is so cute and strange at the same time whom is just this jumping orange that has an ant eater like nostril or mouth, it's also the most foul-mouthed character whenever he/she gets bonked on the head by whatever obstacle, he/she then spouts out some profanity, at least I assume it's profanity. With all those random word symbols who the heck knows what the heck QBert is saying, he/she is an alien after all.

The gameplay is great I really like, the control scheme is solid at first it may seem a bit awkward because instead of left, right, up and down, it's diagonal left, right, down and up. But you get use to it quickly and it will seem as natural as breathing. I really love the amount of color this game has, in a way this game is also by its nature an art game as you change the color of the pyramid while trying to outmaneuver your opponents.

Each of the levels always present not just a different color but a different kind of challenge, like in one level jump on the same block twice to change it to the assigned color.

Of course this game has tools to help, one which is this little slime ball, if you catch it then time will freeze up for everyone on screen except you whom have the freedom of movement giving you a brief window of time to do what you must, I always thought that feature was so cool you could say it almost predates the bullet time from "The Matrix".

Also, there are some hover discs on the side of the pyramid that will elevate you straight up to safety but also a way to trick enemies that jump your direction and get them to fall off the pyramid, but be careful make sure your positioned correctly to jump on the discs otherwise you'll fall straight off as well.

Q Bert is a hopping good time.

Rating: 4 stars