How to play Q*bert’s Qubes online
Q*bert only hops diagonally. The manual tells you to hold the joystick turned so that its corners point up, down, left and right. On a keyboard this means pressing two arrow keys together.
- Hop: two arrow keys together (up + right, up + left, down + right, down + left)
- Start or restart a game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Starting level: F4 sets the left difficulty switch; A starts at Level 1 (easy), B at Level 6 (difficult)
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
A target cube is shown in the upper left corner of the screen. Your job is to make a row of four cubes on the playfield look exactly like it. Each time Q*bert jumps off a cube, the cube rolls over in that direction and shows different coloured faces, so you may have to tumble the same cube several times before it matches. In the early levels a matched cube is locked in place; later on, it can be knocked out of place again, even by Q*bert himself. There are ten levels of four rounds each, and every fourth round is followed by a bonus round. Q*bert starts with six lives and earns an extra one every 10,000 points.
- Meltniks are deadly and sink into cubes of their own colour.
- Purple Ball is deadly and hatches Rat-a-tat-tat when it reaches the bottom.
- Rat-a-tat-tat chases you. Change the colour of the cube it is on and it loses its balance (500 points the first time).
- Shoobops can be caught for 100 points, but they turn matched cubes back into unmatched ones.
- Green Ball freezes everyone except Q*bert, and Sheldon the turtle slows them down. Both are worth catching.
Tips
- Watch the target, not the cube. Before you jump, think about which face will end up on top after the roll.
- Grab Green Ball whenever you can. While everything is frozen you can finish a row in peace.
- Chase Shoobops away from your row. In later levels they can undo finished work.
- Green is safe, except Meltniks. Green characters can be caught, but a green Meltnik is still deadly.
History
The arcade game ran on the same hardware as the original Q*bert. Parker Brothers showed its home versions at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1985, and the game appeared on the 2600 and the ColecoVision. Q*bert was a huge hit, but the sequel went almost unnoticed, which is why the 2600 cartridge is so hard to find now.
