| paleface [sys=NES; cat=Platformer; reg=UC] |
| | | | Unlike the arcade and PS3 (see entry 1153) versions DOESN'T flash the screen bright green when you jump on the disc to go up to the top and Coily tries to follow and falls to his death (not sure if the flash is specifically when Coily dies). |
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| | | | Published under Konami's ULTRA Games label. GameFAQs and MobyGames say Konami developed this port themselves. US-only release. |
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Trying out Q*bert for the NES, in the emulator Mesen!
Konami made this version, but it only came out in the West--under their Ultra Games label. And unlike all the other versions I've seen--including the lovely 1080p version that was one of the first things I bought on PS3 back in the day--it doesn't flash the screen bright green when Q*bert jumps on a disc! So my crusty ol' eyes can actually play this version. ^ _^
It doesn't do the weird gibberish speech sounds that the arcade version does, though. 8 P
You can remap the directional controls at the start but the interface for it confuses my orthogonal brain so I just skip past it and turn the controller 45 degrees clockwise. :"P
There's an infinite lives cheat ( https://gamehacking.org/game/30613 ; it's also accessible directly in Mesen's built-in cheat database), but it just makes it so that when you get hit by an enemy or whatever, the enemies all clear out and you just go on from there, your lives counter staying fixed at 4. That doesn't seem very fun, eh.
Oh well of course the way to do it would just be to make a save state at the start of each stage. Hm. So yeah if I'm ever feeling particularly masochistic I could try that. Eeeh!
The NES version FAQ's https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/587540-qbert/faqs/64992 key to beating the game is memorizing the enemy spawn sequences, so you know who's coming. Also, it recommends going for finishing the two bottom rows first. It mentions that later levels toggle through 3 layers of colors--at first cycling back to the 2nd color from the 3rd color, then cycling back to the 1st color from the 3rd color. Egads. (That might be levels 4 and 5? Then supposedly it stays the same through level 9, where you get the "ending"--then it loops back to level 1 and goes again from there.)
... The FAQ also mentions that the game was once rated the 3rd hardest game on the system. = ooo Oh that seems to be here: http://electricfrankfurter.blogspot.com/2011/07/top-30-hardest-nes-games-ever.html (The top two are #2 Starship Hector--a shmup by Hudson Soft--and #1 Ikari Warriors.)
My big problem was almost invariably colliding with some deadly monster just spawning in whenever I went to the upper cubes. I suppose the thing to do would be to save those for when you've ridden a disc up to the top, since that clears out all the monsters for a bit.
The game's title screen seems to imply that Konami owned the Q*bert trademark and copyright but I couldn't find anything in Googling about it that said they were ever the owners of the Q*bert property--just that they were a distributor of the arcade version--along with Sega--in Japan. Maybe Q*bert was in an iffy state around this time (1989; Sony acquired Q*bert rights holders Columbia in that year, and still hold them) because according to http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/qbert/ , until Hasbro came along, this NES version was the last Q*bert produced for 10 years. |
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