Where Are They Now: Q*Bert

An anonymous reader writes "Two guys who worked on SNL and the Conan show cover the drug-addled history of Atari's classic blobish-looking character, Q*Bert."

Comments

Q*Bert was NOT from Atari!

[Eric Smith]

Q*Bert was a Gottlieb game!

Why do people seem to think that all arcade games came from Atari?

Re:what does the * stand for anyways?

[jdkane]

Here's a more informative article about the History of Q*Bert as recalled by Jeff Lee. An excerpt from the article partially addresses the name issue:

One of Richard's suggestions for the main character was Q*Bert, a combination of CUBE (QUBE) and HUBERT. Don't ask me who Hubert is. Waxman recalls an intermediate step, "It went from *&!!#$$! to cubert but I was afraid it would be pronounced 'cub bert' so I had suggested that the 'cu' be changed to 'q'."

Looks like the asterisk might have come from the swearing characters.

More than you wanted to know about Q*Bert

[TheRIAAMustDie]

I loved the game, and still play it, Qix, and Bert (a mac 68xxx version of qbert) in both its original forms, and with the 2001 Q*Bert game for Macintosh.

Licensed to Konami for Japanese manufacture and distribution. (02/1983)

Inspired by artwork by M.C. Escher who was an artist that Jeff admired. 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.

Approximately 30, 000 units were produced.

Grab the rom (valid for mame from .36final to .63 ) here

PLAY INSTRUCTIONS:

- Jump on squares to change them to the target color.

- Stay on playfield! Jumping off results in a fatal plumment unless a disk is there.

- Avoid all objects and creatures that are not green.

- Use spinning disks to lure snake to his death.

- Extra life at 8000 and each additional 14000.

Twenty years ago, gamers were captivated by a foul-mouthed orange mutant named Q*bert. In the two decades following his epic battle with the relentless Coiley, Q*bert's life evolved into a happy, normal existence. Q*bert had a girl, Q*dina (you can tell she's a girl because she's got a bow ), a powerless, frustrated enemy named Q*dirk, and a big cube land to hop around in and show off the enigmatic protrusion that must be the source of his power and charm (yeah, just go on thinking it's a nose).

Recently, with the help of Hasbro Interactive, an insidious corporation called Sega stole Q*bert's female and placed arch-nemesis Coiley in his path, hoping the ensuing confrontation would be enough to revive their doomed platform.

When asked to comment on the situation, Q*bert said, "&%$#@."