Q*Bert is a "change all the tiles
to the right color" game set on a cubic pyramid.
Your main enemy is a Purple snake (Coily) who chases you
and will kill you if he lands on you. There are also two
enemies (Ugg and Wrongway) that follow different rules
of gravity and land on the sides of the cubes as they
traverse the board. Finally there are green creatures
(Slick and Sam) that reset the tiles as they hop around
the board. It’s best to hop on them as soon as possible.
The graphics in the Colecovision version of Q*bert
are quite good. The boards are colorful, but the character
sprites are one color. The music and sound effects are
very good and close to arcade quality, except Q*bert’s
"noise samples" are missing.
The gameplay is all there—even the intro screens—and
gets quite hectic with the various things to avoid as
you try to clear each level. At first, the tiles must
be changed only once. Later on gameplay heats up, as you’ll
have to go through multiple colors to clear tiles and
tiles can be accidentally reset.
Q*bert is a quirky game, perhaps because
of its odd band of characters. However, the gameplay is
excellent, reasonably complex and has that "just
one more try" feel of all great games. Highly recommended.
2008 ben langberg, all rights reserved.