Q*bert was cute! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Orange

Q*bert was an interesting looking character, sort of lonely, sort of worried, very short, with big eyes. He had a nose that was shaped like an inverse funnel. Early suggestions in the game's planning stage had the then un-named Q*bert shooting boogers out of his nose. Mercifully, these suggestions were never put into practice.

Answer: Seven

According to documents written by the game's creator, Warren Davis, the pyramid structure concept was born from looking at a screen full of adjoining triangles which had been created by another programmer. He noted that if you changed the colours of selected triangles it gave the pattern a three-dimensional cubed appearance.

Answer: To change the colour of each block

What a simple life Q*bert has, jumping around on a bunch of blocks all day! But is it really that simple? "No!" says Q*bert!

In the first level, Q*bert jumps on a cube once to set it to the goal colour (specified at the top left of the game screen). Once the colour is changed, it stays that way.

However, in level two, a cube has to be jumped on twice. The first jump sets an intermediate colour, whilst the second landing sets the cube to the goal colour. Again, once changed (to the goal colour), the cube stays changed.

In level three, one jump on a cube sees the goal colour appear. But if Q*bert jumps on the same cube, the cube reverts back to the original colour. Each landing thereafter has the colour changing between the goal and original colours.

Level four has the first jump setting the cube to an intermediate colour. A second landing on the same cube sets the goal colour, but any subsequent landings after that have the colour alternating between the intermediate and goal colour.

The fifth level and beyond has the first jump changing the cube to the intermediate colour, and as expected, the next jump changes the cube to the goal colour. But danger lurks! If you land on the cube again, it sets the colour back to the start colour, and that pattern repeats thereafter.

Needless to say, after levels one and two, life gets pretty complicated, especially for the cubes on the last row and the extremities, which had limited directions from which they could be approached. It is enough to drive a player insane.

Answer: Coily

Coily is hidden when he first drops onto the pyrmaid inside a purple Whammy Ball. When the Whammy Ball makes it's way to the bottom row, Coily appears and chases Q*bert. If you are able to lure Coily to an edge block, and then jump onto the spinning Disc, he will attempt to follow, but plummet to his death. This also has the effect of eliminating any other enemies that are on the playing grid at that time. But they soon return...

The other enemies in the game are Ugg and Wrong-Way. Like Coily, they are purple, which apparently in "Q*bert" is the universal colour that represents evil. Ugg and Wrong Way show up at the same time. Instead of bouncing on top of the cubes, they move around the sides (Wrong Way on the left, Ugg on the right). The move in a zig-zag pattern dropping one row at a time, until they fall from the bottom row. Also appearing are red Whammy Balls. They drop down from above and progress downwards in random directions until they fall to their doom.

If any of these characters or Whammy Balls land on the same cube as Q*bert, or vice-versa, Q*bert loses a life.

Answer: It freezes all enemies temporarily, and earns a 100 point bonus

Q*bert loves the green balls because they freeze the screen for a short while, which can be very advantageous in later levels when there is a troublesome cube that is proving hard to get to. For this reason, I suspect, the green balls are not commonly seen items.

Answer: 8000 points and then each additional 14000 points thereafter

A little "Q*bert" trivia for you. When Q*bert is caught by an enemy, he utters "@!#?@!". This sound, like many scattered throughout the game, is a random phoneme of a speech chip. The only intelligible words programmed into the game are the slightly suggestive "Hello, I'm turned on" when the game starts up and a friendly "Bye-bye" when the game finishes.

Answer: True

The Disc provides a ready means of escape for Q*bert in situations where he is trapped, or when he is attempting to lure Coily to his fate! Q*bert then rides the Disc back the the top of the pyramid, where he jumps off, at which point the Disc disappears. Whilst no new enemies appear whilst Q*bert is riding the Disc, it is not unknown for a new enemy to drop onto Q*bert the very moment that he alights onto the pyramid. It is for this reason that it is extremely unwise to hesitate when being returned to the pyramid's zenith.

Good players (myself not included) can earn bonus points by having unused discs remaining at the end of a stage. Bad players (myself definitely included) are not unknown to have missed a Disc completely and hence plunged to an unsuspecting death...

Answer: They change the colour of the cubes

In level four of the game, Slick (he wears dark glasses) and Sam (he has the big eyes) start to bounce down from the top of the pyramid, in the same manner as all other game characters. Q*bert is well advised to capture these two green guys as soon as possible, for two reasons. Firstly, they are worth 300 points each. Secondly, although harmless to Q*bert, every cube that Sam and Slick land on changes to a colour other than the goal colour. All in all, friendly but pesky characters!

Answer: Nine levels, four rounds per level

After the fourth round of level nine, the same round and level repeats itself ad nauseum. In my experince (of watching others play), if you were good enough to get there on one coin, you were good enough to stay there as well. That is, until you had to go home for dinner or beddy-byes!

More Q*bert trivia to be shared here. The working name for "Q*bert" during the game's development was "The Cube Game". Staff at Gottlieb (the company that developed Q*bert) were asked to come up with a name for the game. At a meeting the name "Cube" was suggested and a further suggestion was made for "Hubert" as it rhymed with "Cube". From a combination of those words, "Q*bert" was born!

When Q*bert plunged to his death, a noise was simulated in the game cabinet by dropping a pinball onto a hard surface (as Gottlieb was a major distributor of Pinball machines, they probably had some spare pinballs lying around!). A more satisfactory "thud" sound could be produced by attaching some foam to the surface, but Gottlieb deemed this to be too labour intensive, production-wise. Arcade owners were able to turn the knocking sound on or off as they saw fit.

Answer: Moscow on the Hudson

A close-up of Q*bert being played was shown in the movie "Moscow on the Hudson". Both Gottlieb as a company and "Moscow on the Hudson" as a movie were owned by Columbia Pictures. As such, there seems to be a logical connection and the likelihood of Q*bert's big screen debut being purely circumstantial seems somewhat limited!