Q*Bert (Qバート)

From Warren Davis: "Another programmer, Kan Yabumoto, had filled a screen with shaded hexagons which looked like cubes. I had the idea of creating a pyramid out of them, and dropping balls down. This was a programming exercise for myself to program randomness (the balls have exactly 2 choices of which way to go each time they hit a surface) and gravity. It was after I had this programmed that other people noticed it and we were encouraged to turn it into a game."

Ron Waxman came up with the idea of Q*Bert changing the color of the cubes. Q*Bert's name originated by the combination of cube and Hubert, but the Cube-Bert was changed to Q-Bert to make it more unique. The concept game was called Snots and Boogers and then @!#?@! (which many of the programmers and Gottlieb VPs said would be impossible to get anyone to say) before the final version was called just Q*Bert. Slick and Sam were a play on the phrase "spick and span" with Sam being named after co-worker Sam Russo. Rick Tighe came up with the idea of adding the pinball hardware which generated the very mechanical KA-CHUNK when Q*Bert falls off the pyramid.

Tips and Tricks:

Good results can be obtained by working your way down one end of the level at the start, moving across the bottom to the other side, catching a disk to the top, and then filling in the middle squares.

A big part of the game is waiting to see where creatures are going to jump. You need to make sure you always time a jump at the same time the creatures jump to you can always have a clear path to a new square.

After level 9, the levels repeat themselves.

Because the game was developed during the period when Columbia Pictures owned Gottlieb, the intellectual rights to Q*bert remained with Columbia, even after they divested themselves of Gottlieb's assets in 1984. The rights have been owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment since 1989. Q*bert appeared in Disney's Wreck-It Ralph franchise under license from Sony, and later appeared in the film, Pixels.