Q * bert

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Q * bert
Q-Bert Logo.svg
Studio Gottlieb
Publisher Gottlieb
Senior Developer Jeff Lee
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1982
genre Skill game
Game mode 2 players take turns
control 4-way joystick
casing Standard and Cocktail
Arcade system Main CPU : 8086 (@ 5 MHz)
Sound CPU: 6502 (@ 894.886 kHz) Sound
chips: DAC , samples
monitor Raster resolution 240 × 256 (3: 4 horizontal) Color palette: 16
information Inspired by MC Escher
Q * bert on a Commodore 64

Q * bert [ ˈkjuːbərt ] is a computer game published in 1982 by the Gottlieb company and is also the name of the main character. The game was inspired by the artwork of MC Escher .

Gameplay

The title character is an orange ball with legs, eyes and a trumpet-shaped mouth. The playing field consists of colored cubes that are arranged in a triangle and must be recolored by the title hero by jumping on them. In the further course of the game this is made more difficult by the fact that the dice change color several times until they reach the target color, or even take on the original color again when jumping again. If Q * bert jumps out of the field, he loses a life.

opponent

Q * bert has to avoid various opponents, if touched he casts an incomprehensible curse and loses a life:

Bullets

Red balls fall onto the topmost cube and from there step by step further down until they fall out of the playing field at the bottom. You must not be touched by Q * Bert. Green balls, on the other hand, give Q * Bert a few seconds of peace from enemies when touched.

Coily

Coily starts out as an ordinary ball, but it is purple. When it has reached the bottom, however, it does not fall out of the field of play, but turns into a snake coiled into a spring that Q * bert pursues and can only be eliminated by Q * bert opening the discs that are on the edge of the field at certain points Are available and put it on the topmost die, used. However, these disappear after use.

Ugg and Wrongway

Ugg and Wrongway jump on the sides of the dice until they disappear from the playing field on the left and right, respectively. In doing so, they babble incomprehensible stuff that makes people familiar with the scene (at least in German-speaking countries) smile, because you can hear the words "you gays!" If touched, Q * Bert loses a life.

Slick and Sam

Slick and Sam, however, do not pose a direct threat to Q * bert, they can even be defeated by him by jumping on them. Instead, they color the cubes they jump on back in their original color.

Ports

The game was also produced as a pinball machine by D. Gottlieb & Co. in 1983 under the name Q * bert's Quest .

In 1983 Q * bert was ported to the devices ColecoVision , G7000 , Intellivision , Atari 2600 , Atari 5200 and the Commodore 64 as well as to MS-DOS under the name J-Bird . In 1989, Q * bert was also released on the Nintendo Entertainment System . In 1992 the game appeared on the Game Boy . In 1999 a PlayStation version was released. In 2000 a Microsoft Windows and Dreamcast version was developed. The Game Boy Color version, which was also released in 2000, was first created by a fan named Paul Chinn via reverse engineering , then discovered, authorized and marketed by the rights holder. In 2007 Sony released an HD version for its PlayStation 3 , which is available in the PlayStation Store (dedicated, device-own online store).

Bert Q * is also a standard game on the phones Sony Ericsson T610 and T630 .

Sony's Q * bert was released for the iPhone in July 2009 .

Others

  • Q * bert has a guest appearance in the movie Ralph Enough .
  • Q * bert has a supporting role in the movie Pixels .
  • In the episode In the Name of the Grandfather of the animated series The Simpsons , Bart, Lisa and Marge Simpson tour the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Bart and Lisa are then followed by Marge on a rock, and the scene turns into Q * bert's playing field.

Cheat

The Freiburg computer scientists Patryk Chrabaszcz, Ilya Loshchilov and Frank Hutter developed and examined an AI system that learned to play Q * bert itself. It uses a previously unknown program error, which makes it possible to achieve an exceptionally high score in a short time by making unusual moves.

successor

  • Q * bert's Qubes (Arcade, 1984)
  • Q * bert 3 (Nintendo Famicom, 1993)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Description by J-Bird on abandonia.com , accessed July 20, 2011
  2. ↑ Paul Chinn: Qbert ( English ) Retrieved on January 14, 2013: “ In the spring of 2000 I released a freeware Gameboy Color ROM, that was an identical clone of the old Q * bert arcade game. You can read the story behind its creation and obtain the game below. Shortly after I put the ROM on my website something amazing happened ... someone in the Gameboy developer community came across my version of the game and passed it on to Majesco Sales. Majesco had the rights to do the Gameboy Color version of Q * bert, and they contacted me to see if I'd be interested in enhancing what I'd done and making it a commercial product. "
  3. ↑ Patryk Chrabaszcz, Ilya Loshchilov, Frank Hutter: Back to Basics: Benchmarking Canonical Evolution Strategies for Playing Atari
  4. ↑ Deutschlandfunk , Computer und Kommunikation , March 3, 2018, available under Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , from 1'14 ″ @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ondemand-mp3.dradio.de
  5. ↑ The Verge : A video game-playing AI beat Q * bert in a way no one's ever seen before (This is what happens when you leave AI agents alone)