Q*bert is a 1982 arcade game published by Gottlieb, created by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee

In Q*bert, the player maneuvers the eponymous character around an isometric pyramid-like structure of tri-colored cubes. Q*bert's purpose is to hop around the tops of these cubes, changing every square to a specific color (e.g., from blue to yellow).

Q*bert is harassed by an assortment of enemies. "Coily" the snake appears at the top of the pyramid inside a purple ball, bouncing toward the bottom of the screen. Once he hits the bottom row of cubes, the snake springs out from inside, hopping around in pursuit of the little orange protagonist. Red balls also appear at the top of the pyramid, bringing bouncing death if they collide with Q*bert on the way down.

Other threats come from "Ugg" and "Wrong-Way," a purple pig and gremlin team who bounce along the side of the cubes. Additionally, Q*bert has to deal with "Slick" and "Sam," two green pineapples who turn cubes back to their original color when they hop on them. Q*bert can eliminate Slick or Sam by jumping onto them.

Aside from some strategic hopping, Q*bert's only defenses are the spinning discs at the side of the pyramid and the green balls that bounce across the squares. The discs provide a quick escape, floating Q*bert back to the top of the pyramid as Coily jumps to his death in pursuit. The green balls freeze the enemies, giving Q*bert a free run of the pyramid for a limited time.

The protagonist of the game, Q*bert, is a squat, orange character with a tubular nose and expressive eyes. Whenever he is caught by the enemy, he reports the expletive "@!#?@!". This is an early example of a video game character showing emotion, allowing players to identify with it[1]. It is this human connection that initiated various items of merchandising, such as a Q*bert doll and a Saturday morning cartoon.

The character was designed by Jeff Lee, who had been drawing goofy characters since he was young, inspired by comics, cartoons and Mad magazine. Q*bert's distinctive tubular nose was originally intended for him to shoot projectiles from, an idea supported by everyone at Gottlieb apart from Warren Davis. Since Davis was the only programmer on the project, this idea never made it into the game.

The animated cartoon merchandizing tie-in debuted on CBS' Saturday Supercade, with the orange furball now sporting arms, a mouth, a pair of sneakers, and a high school letterman's jacket. All of Q*Bert's friends and enemies were also featured in the cartoon, along with some "show-only" characters that had never appeared in the games. The setting of the segment in the Saturday Supercade was "Q-Burg". One notable feature about the cartoon segment was that it was the only segment in the entire show that used the game's original sound effects. Furthermore, the original concept of having Q*Bert fire projectiles from his nose also made it into the cartoon in the form of black oil slick balls called "slippy-do's". Q*bert was a natural for the merchandising world, and stores soon stocked up on Q*bert dolls, lunchboxes, sleeping bags, and more. A board game and a card game were also created

The video game crash of 1983 brought an end to Q*bert's reign. The market's collapse delivered a death blow to Q*bert's arcade sequel, Q*bert's Qubes. While retaining the iconic pyramid field of play, Q*bert's Qubes added further challenges to gameplay by scattering the cubes into separate space. Now, when Q*bert hopped off, the cubes actually rotated to a new side, shifting in the direction of Q*bert's jump.

These new touches failed to generate much interest in a depressed market. Few Q*bert's Qubes machines even made it to the public, and the character's arcade career was over. A third arcade game was also under development in 1983, but never made it out of the prototype stage. In-house, it was called "Faster Harder More Challenging Q*bert (FHMC Q*bert)". The only existing stand-up arcade version of FHMC Q*bert resides in creator Warren Davis's personal collection[4].

In 1983, Gottlieb created a Q*bert themed four-flipper pinball table called Q*bert's Quest. The table was unusual in that the bottom two flippers were inverted in an upside-down 'V' fashion. The game reused sounds taken from in the Q*bert arcade game, as well as a spoken sample from Q*bert itself: a squeaky "Bye Bye" when the game concluded[citation needed].

Q*bert was also featured in the cartoon Saturday Supercade, though it has only tangential similarities to the game's premise. The characters are depicted as a 60's society of multiple "Q*berts" (the main Q*bert character was identifiable by his orange color and jacket). Enemies such as Coily and Ugg serve as the neighborhood bullies[citation neede