Q*bert

"READ MY SNOUT: no new shift-number swears!"

Slapping a love story wrapper on a classic puzzle game seems like an ideal way to kill it, especially if you throw in a marked overemphasis on the latest trend in special effects. But with that orange blob Q*Bert there is no chance of dialog, which also kills off any sappy dialog. Or if it's there it comes out as a bunch of noises we used to suspect robots and computers would make in the future. So we're left with a charming pantomime. The crux: Q*Bert goes cruising the neighborhood on his swirly platform, Q*Bert finds girl(Q*Dina, who has eyelashes and, like Ms. Pac-man, a bow) Q*Bert loses her to an unusually purple black hole, Q*Bert follows into said purple hole and tries to outfox Coily the Snake and his pyramid-hopping minions to reach her. The game has a low barrier to entry if players adjust the controls so that up moves Q*Bert up/left and then hold the controller at an angle, because you rarely need to use the shape buttons. You can't play shooters with five different weapons all the time.

IT'S A BLOB'S LIFE

Given that the PSX CD also contains the excellent Q*Bert Classic, we have a good point of reference for a bizarre game. The original version featured Q*Bert, big nose and half the usual limbs and all, jumping diagonally around a triangular lattice of twenty-eight squares--cubes actually, linked together, but he only touched the top face. Once he turned them all a certain color he made the next board. First he'd have to jump on each square once, on later boards he'd have to do it twice, and then there was a twist: jumping on a square the right color turned it back. Eventually squares would loop three times, making it hard for the novice to solve the board even without the monsters. And there were lethal red balls that dropped down the level and fell off(they regenerate that way--Q*Bert doesn't,) a big purple one that dropped to the bottom and turned into Coily, a snake that chased Q*Bert. Later on Q*Bert faced Ugg and Wrong-Way coming up from the bottom corners and Sam and Slick dropping down to reset his hard work. Q*Bert's only help was in the form of a small green ball that froze all monsters and discs he could jump on to goad Coily off the pyramid and put himself back at the top. Through this Q*Bert spit out a six letter(okay, shift-character) word whenever he jumped off the pyramid or got caught. I guess you could say he gives a hundred and fifty percent while swearing.

BUT WHERE's Q*ERNIE?

Fifteen years after Q*Bert was such a big arcade success, there are new characters and backgrounds and level contours even if Q*Bert still says the same thing when he touches an enemy(I guess they wanted to keep the 'E' rating and were already pushing it.) Once he only had to jump on a triangular arrangement of squares, and he didn't have to vary his overall strategy. But the course of true love never did run smooth. On the shifted grids, Q*Bert will encounter more optical headaches, bottlenecks, cul-de-sacs and even de facto stairways in the new boards, no two of which are alike.

And there are a lot. Six levels per world, four worlds, and four to six sub-grids per level. Once Q*Bert finishes a level he can see the next one, and he even has a choice of low, medium or high difficulty--the differences being the number of lives he can lose and the bonus multiplier. The game tracks high scores by level, so you can always focus on one to improve.

Everybody still makes diagonal jumps, but Q*Bert has the occasional power-up for invincibility or speed(i.e. falling off the pyramid unless you have insanely fast reflexes) which can be held until needed, and there are even funny squares that disappear after Q*Bert jumps on them and modes of transport beyond the discs just off the pyramid. Miniature Q*Berts give a free life if Q*Bert can keep after them, and there are many more enemies patrolling randomly. They also have different abilities; Q*Bert can jump under some, some are quicker than others, and many have pre-set patterns or even poison a square before Q*Bert can go on it. Q*Bert can also summon the wizard Z!La to blast Coily on other occasions or call out A!Bol, the construction worker, to build blocks to walk on. Outside the adventure(the bulk of the CD,) there's even Q*Dirk for a set of friendly(I'll take his grimace as competitive determination) two-player levels where certain squares you jump on can reset the board or send enemies after your opponent.

WHO NOSE WHAT EVIL LIES INSIDE A PURPLE BALL?

At first you have levels introducing you to a trick or two, along with Coily and his red-ball cohorts and, near the end, classic villains and the more predictable new ones. Different enemy speeds are a key component of the game. Although many monsters have a pattern you can reason, slow ones can often block your way as you flee Coily. One board will seem to be an optical illusion, one will have hills and valleys of platforms to jump on(at first you'll miss a few jumps, but there's a logic to all this,) several will have dead ends or narrow walkways that Q*Bert needs more than a spare moment to visit safely, and another will buckle or dip in the center. Each level has a center structure Q*Bert must jump around to access the sub-boards, and you're tantalized with areas you can't access yet because your score-based rank isn't high enough. There aren't too many dead end squares yet.

Q*Bert loses the help of Z!La's magic and has to chase after some red, green and blue youngsters that spoil his work in the second world. It's the only strictly linear one of the lot; you move from a dark cliff area to a Mayan environment, a city area where jumping on squares gives more light, an arctic area, a fiery one and the finale where you can switch the lights on a special eyeball square. The levels may be smaller, but you have more tight spots and more squares to time jumping on.

The third world is probably the toughest; now, the central board where you can access the others has some element of challenge, unless there is a system of transports between boards(usually cannons that fire Q*Bert,) which requires some mapping. Q*Bert will walk over metal girders, some created by A!Bol, and frequently you'll need to jump on a button square to shift the girders to allow passage to the other side of the screen or make enemies drop off the structure. Some boards also progress in pieces; clear one part, and a new one appears. When combined with squares that flip back, exact play is required. This level has definite patterns, but the enemy combinations thrown at you make attempts at perfection maddening.

The final world makes up in artistry what it doesn't have in outright challenge. For the first few, Coily is guarding Q*Dina in a cage at the center board, and each time Q*Bert must complete the side boards. One level has a confusing hidden board, but then there is a maze and a walk up a cliff before a level full of falling stars, bugs and keyhole squares. After this imagination you have a couple of challenges that are meant to seem impressive, but they either give you vertigo or temporary squints. Fortunately, they saved some imagination for the end scene.

There are also hidden boards throughout; some aren't available until you've achieved a certain score, while others lie behind slightly nonconventional discs or squares. They may be like the usual, or they may be outright bonus boards where you can hop around, with squares dropping in your wake(some take a few seconds, and bouncing on them several times to tempt fate gets big points,) until you can't go any further. Getting through some of these(or proving you can't) makes for some analysis that can be interesting but never taxing.

The game may not be too terribly challenging on easy level, where I spent eight hours, but I cannot be the only gamer who needs the sort of confidence-building mild challenge of Q*Bert. You will not find any immense challenge such as the repeating nineteenth board in the arcade game, but there's no frustration with the controls or an illogical boss that I've found with platformers of similar length. For people who feel they're experts, having three lives to complete six boards(hard level) should give any gamer a tense enough challenge, which he can mitigate somewhat by completing the boards in his preferred order.

ABSTRACT GAME, ABSTRACT ART

If the arcade original had one shortcoming it was the lack of a colorful background. Back then it was pretty jazzy how the screen flashed different colors when you completed a level. Now you're greeted with a skit where Q*Bert meets and loses Q*Dina before he descends into a series rainbow vortexes to decide which level to conquer next.

The classic enemies are a bit more rounded than the arcade, which is almost disappointing, as they fail to seem threatening at all. But Q*Bert himself no longer looks bored and stiff. He somersaults or shakes slightly even when staying put on the pyramid, and he spins and falls like a melodramatic boxer when meeting an enemy. However, many of the new enemies give clues to the direction they'll go next, although there's some occasional annoyance with enemies such as boulders that sink into a square. Like some squares you can step on twice, which have subtle differences between the intermediate and final colors, there are telling details in the square design that you must sort out--near the end you have a very dark board with occasional light swaths to help you, adding a challenge of more than just tougher monsters. Of course there are some levels where the designs after you jump on them look nice, with the arboreal and chameleon particularly pleasing. The squares that drop after you jump on them, well, it's almost not worth the points to see them go with their swirls and Mardi Gras themes.

Spinning polygons and helices on the first level make way for the night, snow, and volcanoes. Later the game various important and indefinite looking tools or machines, many of which transport Q*Bert, and it is back to nature for level four with waterfalls or forests below the pyramid--you even have a fancy fence guarding the pyramid bottom, which is quite pretty for being a few levels too late to be useful.

The more topologically diverse levels are a headache to solve but clearly imaginative. You'll have a few frustrating introductions where you just jump the wrong way, but the graphics provide enough clues. Target squares where enemies drop down are clearly labeled, and you even see shadows on them when something is about to drop. And of course you can either see roughly which way enemies are facing(various cyclops and bugs) or you must remember their pattern tendencies(pulsing sparks.) It's also clear which enemies Q*Bert can bounce under. In homage to the original arcade instructions at a level's start(Q*Bert hopping on squares so you can see what he does) there's a short whimsical set of scenes showing Q*Bert outfoxing his enemies or getting help from his allies. This brief cinema seems more natural than the usual pop-up screen telling you what to do next.

Although larger levels that take up two screens refocus well when you switch areas(the increased space actually makes these easy,) the game does tend to block important parts of the board occasionally. Your score is the main culprit, Unlike the puzzle where you need to find a light to turn on, or where you can dim the play field to slow the monsters, this is an unfair, especially a board you need to solve is hiding. And often you will have to guess at the way to jump in that area when moving between boards. Usually the game gives you a break, and you can't fall off, but as opposed to the edge of the screen, which retains the mystery of an unseen board, this is tacky. The power-up with Z!La shooting Coily also obstructs the screen for five seconds while monsters still chase you, which makes the goodies(besides the extra man, a pesky fast bite-sized Q*Bert) functionally useless in all but one case.

TWIST AND SNOUT

Q*Bert's soundtrack is impressive. It changes for each level, and Q*Bert's popping noises when he jumps provide a good baseline. The opening level features what elevator music should be, and adventure features xylophones and noises best described as 'glubbing,' and while the pounding machine noises can be enervating the game bounces back with wind chime noises that don't bug me. All this without a single decipherable word. Q*Bert even gives the occasional mumble, but his catch phrase at appropriate points in the plot adds humor and even pathos.

And I find after a tough or outright bad game from my collection, it's easy to go back to the final Q*Bert level and enjoy the final mini-musical. Q*Bert has to deal a bit violently with Coily in the end, but his fellow pyramid hoppers join in for a finale much funnier than the average licensed game hero's punch-line punch-in-the-gut.

A NEW ANGLE ON GAMING

Q*Bert's controls, which will be an issue no matter how often(the oftener, the better) the game is ported, will surely turn off much of the prospective audience before they give the game a fair try. That is too bad. Those who can handle holding the controller a bit differently will be rewarded, as after fifteen minutes the game will bend your general reasoning. With such a variety of levels it's hard to suggest any realistic improvements. While I'm dreaming I'd like to see them slap in Q*Bert's Qubes with Q*Bert Classic and, while I'm at it, the prototype Faster Harder More Challenging Q*Bert as well. As this is a bit much to ask I settled for going through the game again, accessing parts only available after I'd piled up a good score and even risking medium and hard on levels I had the hang of.

Q*Bert was one of the first games I bought for my PlayStation, and I pulled it off the bargain rack, which started a bad habit. I still nurture a hope I'll find a game as good as Q*Bert there again, but it's never quite worked out. I have to rely on tricky stuff like the advice of other people or my own experiences having been burned. Some strategies may seem to repeat after a while, and I'd have liked a stronger puzzle finale perhaps similar to later levels of the arcade, but the mellow new version contrasts well with the frenetic classic game, and the level design is terrific. The game uses many higher-technology features without ever seeming to waste them: textures, cinema between levels, hierarchies of boards, and variations on a classic theme. On expanding to the PSX, Q*Bert may not have expanded his colorful vocabulary, but his universe has gotten more exciting.

@!#?@! YEAH
--funny love story
--great backgrounds
--great ending
--Q*Bert has gained personality!
--Q*Bert vs. Coily battle is more in-depth
--good move including Q*Bert Classic
--can focus on any level or amount of challenge
--replayable so you can discover new levels
--graphics and new squares are logical and colorful

OH @!#?@!
--big levels can make board seem a bit small
--some obstruction
--third world a bit 'dry'
--no intense challenge, the end's a bit wimpy

If I ate oranges, my time playing Q*Bert might make me feel guilty about peeling them. But I blind myself to the dilemma by just drinking orange juice.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/23/02, Updated 10/23/02