Q-bert!

This fuckin guy, right?!

I mean... just look at him... That shnoz! If he could talk in anything more than wing dings I bet he'd be begging you to kill him. I know I would if I had to wake up every morning and look at that in the mirror!

Id welcome the cheap deaths from falling off the side of the map and be like "#@$^#%^&#@$" which means "no I dont wanna respawn, Im good actually, thank you though for your consideration"

So yeah... Qbert! Or Q-bert or whatever you want to call it. Q-bert was released in the way back times of 1982. When I was but a wee lass wandering the hills of Scotland with my clan. The McShithouse clan. But thats a story for another time.

Q-bert was originally released in arcades and was known as a pretty epic quarter muncher. Like a lot of games designed back then, it was purposefully difficult to extend the game play as long as possible and also to make sure you kept spending money, I'm lookin at you Ghosts and Goblins...

The games been on pretty much every console and handheld known to man, including its own small handhelds and tiny arcade style devices. Hell there was probably even a Tiger Electronics handheld version.

The version we are looking at today is the NES version released in 1989 by Ultra Games which was basically Konami. It's probably the version most people these days would be the most familiar with, unless its one of those heathen phone games.

This is Q-bert! I know, its a lot to take in... If you've never played it before... you control some kind of semi retarded mutant orange that looks like the lovechild of a normal orange and a fuckin snork.

I'm a freak of nature! Oranges get my motor goin somethin fierce! - Snork, probably

Using this abomination, you somehow - through the magic of videogames - turn the tops of blocks from one color to another. Why? No one knows! But if you want to see any level other than the first one you better become a block top color changer and you better do it like you mean it!
You start with with 4... whatever the hell Q-bert is and holy shit will you burn through em! It's not a "Nintendo Hard"™ game but its definitely easy to tell it started in the arcade.

I gameovered before I could even get half the level converted to my evil ways, a combination of not playing it in many many years and the incredibly terrible controls of the NES port. Speaking of controls...

This is what the arcade version looked like. Notice that the stick directions are 45 degree angles instead of the traditional 90. Ordinal vs Cardinal directions, if you will.

As you may be aware... The NES controller only came in the "normal damn dpad" variety which left some difficult design choices for a game like this to be ported to the system...

Lets just say... the controls fuckin suck. I mean, theres no two ways about it. Konami did the best they could. They even added (a quite un-intuitive) option to change the controls at the beginning of the game. You can choose between each direction on the dpad acting as an ordinal direction (omg so bad) or using 2 directions on the dpad for each ordinal direction (makes the most sense... only slightly less bad in action)

Either way you have to constantly fight the controls the entire game which results in poor Q-bert accidentally and tragically ending his own life over and over off the side of the stages. Why are they blocks floating in the void to begin with? Again, who knows?!

Maybe this is hell. Yeah its probably hell... an isometric blocky hell.

So besides falling off the stages countless times, there's actual enemies in the game too. Various colored blobs... one purple one that turns into an angry spring... then you got these assholes that start hopping on the sides of the blocks! Like how am I spose to qbert my way out of that shit?! Here I am, a damn qberting fool... like I was born to qbert, and these guys just start hopping on the sides of my damn blocks!

I did eventually make it to level 2 (theres multiple rounds per level) which sees our hero have to touch every block top... twice... twice!

Thats when I was done, dear readers, I had q'd my last bert. So lets rate this shitheap...

I give Q-bert on NES 3 1/2 poops. It's a little worse than middle of the road. I'd say thats due to its terrible controls and old school arcade difficulty. Not the worst game but Id rather have Q-bert snowball me with his dong nose than keep playing it. Thinking about playing Q-bert only makes me want to play a different game that starts with Q... and that game is Qix.

Remember less poops is better. Find more info about the rating system here.

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