Q*Bert is one of the most enjoyable arcade games I've ever had the pleasure of dropping a quarter into. One of the all-time classic  games, over 30 years later this game still holds up and continues to inspire sequels, with new releases for PS 3, PS 4, and PS Vita announced in 2015. At the time of its release, it was quite unique in game play and is really one of the first 3-D platformer-style games. The character of Q*Bert has universal appeal to both children and adults and has been portrayed in all kinds of media and merchandising. In 1983 they had a Saturday morning cartoon I was quite fond of that ran on CBS's Saturday Supercade which also featured other popular video game characters like Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Pitfall, among others. The game's characters also appeared in 2012's 'Wreck it Ralph' and Q*Bert is also supposed to appear in the movie Pixels to be released in July 2015.

GRAPHICS I give a 9. For 1982 this was top of the line. Bright, attractive colors, sharp, crisp graphics, and cool character design really stand out. There's nothing I would change.

SOUND deserves an 7. There's no background music, just the pleasant plopping sound you hear when you hop from square to square. You hear an alert from time to time like when you earn an extra life or land on a ball that freezes time but other than that it's pretty repetitive. I don't really know how this could be improved though, I think maybe a soundtrack could be distracting.

ADDICTIVENESS is where Q*Bert stands out. I give it a ten and here's why : It's been over 30 years since the first time I played this game. I used to be better, but it still comes back with practice. Anyways, that's the point, after all this time it's still fun. I think most people agree once they give it a try. Whether you accidentally jump off the edge or Coily gets the best of you, it's like you always know you SHOULD have been able to escape, if only... So I try again.

STORY  There is none.

DEPTH  I'll give a 7. There is no way to beat the game and the highest score ever was achieved by a guy that played for 84 hours on one quarter!! But it gets progressively harder as you go. The object of the game is just to hop from square to square changing their colors until they all match. In the first round, they need only be hopped on one time to achieve this, in successive rounds however, you will need to jump on them more than once and  plan a strategy to complete a level more easily. There are five enemies, six if you count the red balls that just bounce from top to bottom before they fall. Your main antagonist, Coily, can be a real stinker. He starts out as a purple egg at the top of the pyramid but once it reaches the bottom row, out hatches your arch-enemy. He will pursue Q*Bert tirelessly all around the pyramid until you either complete the level, die, or trick him into jumping off himself by hopping onto a rainbow colored transporter disk positioned around the edges of the game field. Q*Bert is also plagued by two other deadly foes, Ugg and Wrong-Way, These guys, also purple, hop along the sides of the cubes and go from right to left or left to right. Your only recourse is to get out of the way. Finally, you have Slick and Sam. These green party poopers like to hop on squares that Q*Bert has already changed and change them back. They can be stopped by running into them at least. Occasionally, a green ball will appear at the top of the pyramid. If Q*Bert catches this it will freeze all the enemies on the screen for a few seconds.

DIFFICULTY: 8 Some players complain about the control setup not being the best but I honestly don't know how it could be improved. If I haven't played for a while I may make a few ill-timed jumps because I was confused about the control, but it soon becomes intuitive and I don't even have think about it when I'm playing the game. As far as the game itself, it starts out easy but like most arcade games the difficulty curve gets steep quickly. If you stick to it though the game can become such a joy to play.

OVERALL : It's hard for me not to give this game a ten. Based on when it was released it's just the perfect game. Of course it isn't some days-deep RPG or some MMO or whatever, it's Q*Bert. And those games came from somewhere. And besides he was the first video game character to swear. Even if it was @!$?@!
Thanks for reading, and may you catch a green ball every time.

Ah, Q-bert. Such a pain in the neck. Not only for the perspective, but also for the difficulty.

Anyway, other than lacking space between your paragraphs you review as good. I loved the way you put it in its context, showing where it started, its early success and its evolution through the years. You also gave all the detail there was to give; I remember playing it on my father's old PC; there was barely more than the NES version

janus : Thanks for the input. I'm working on the spacing thing. I'm really quite dumb about these things and seem to have trouble with it wanting to split lines up on me and that was the only way I could get it to not do that.

Ferdinand : No worries, my first reviews were all clumped together too. We all go through that stage

janus : Good to know. I usually do figure these things out by trial and error. Hopefully more trial than error in this case.

This review is so nice! You covered a lot in the intro, giving info about Q*Bert and how much of an impact the game has had, and more. You also covered a lot in most of the sections, except story which you really couldn't say much about I feel like I know everything or almost everything about the game already just from reading this review!

I've played Q*Bert only a couple times in my lifetime, and it was several years ago so this review brought me some faint memories. Same with Q*Bert's appearance in Wreck-it-Ralph XD

I laughed at the last two sentences of your review. I appreciate you adding that humor to your review Keep working hard at reviewing, and working hard on vizzed in general!

You did a good @*!#$ing  job on such a good @*!#$ing game. The difficulty is so @*!#$ing high that its hard to beat the first @*!#$ing level because those red balls and that Coily are so @*!#$ing random. Keep up the good work and hopefully more of your reviews are as @*!#$ing good as this one. 

Azul Fria : I promise to at least attempt to include fewer symbols that represent curses in the future. The key thing to remember though is I said 'at least attempt', so, no promises. Thanks for the input,

Ferdinand : Nice Review! The only really pointer I can give is what others said is to work on spacing a bit but that is what everyone does when they do their first reviews ... even I did that on my first review. Other than that though it's great . Keep up the awesome work Ferdinand

I've never played Q*Bert, so I can't really agree or disagree with your thoughts, but I can appreciate the detail and straight forward approach to this review.

Nice work on one of your first reviews. I can't wait to see more of your work, hopefully soon.