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RETRO REVIEW: Parker Brothers Q*Bert

This LED-screen Q*Bert game still works as well as it did on Christmas 1983.

I received this tabletop arcade game back in 1983, on Christmas. I had just turned five years old and Q*Bert became my third-ever video game, right behind Pac-Man and Donkey Kong Jr. It was a gift from my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family. I gleefully opened the box and played it right away. The memory, while fuzzy in a few places, is still quite clear about certain parts of the experience.

I sat on the living room sofa with my head buried into the game’s bright green, blue, and red screen. I didn’t care that there was cake to be had. I was too busy changing blocks to different colours while avoiding the snake and dangerous red balls that rolled down the pyramid. I was hooked.

But not as hooked as my parents would soon be. Yes, my parents actually played video games at one point. And they were actually very good at them. Though I’d play Q*Bert as much as I wanted during the day, it was late in the evenings, when I’d be asleep, that my parents would take turns trying to outdo each other to see who could get the highest score.

This tabletop arcade game of Q*Bert was that entertaining. You have to remember this was also at a time when we didn’t have a home console (my mom later became the master at Safari Hunt for Sega Master System). And together with Pac-Man and Donkey Kong Jr., I was in gaming heaven.

Today, this Q*Bert game sits on a shelf in my bedroom. I hadn’t played it in a long time but when I was taking pictures of it earlier today, I decided to put some batteries in it and see if it still worked. And after all this time – 25 years, almost – it still plays as well as it did back then. Though the stickers have had some of their sticky residue seem through the paper to the front of their designs, it still looks more or less the same. There’s a bit of damage on the underside from when it was stored with batteries in it (this game taught me that batteries like to explode over time when left in toys). But as previously mentioned, it works nicely.

Since this was one of my first video games, it should come as no surprise that I have a deep nostalgia for it. In fact, I can’t play regular versions of Q*Bert because I’m so used to playing this. So how does it play? Compared to today’s standards, not so great, I suppose. But I do still like it. I’m not going to get into the score breakdown or anything like that because in the end it comes down to whether or not this is fun to play. And for me, it is. At the very least, it’s a great conversation piece and a cool bit of retro design. At best, it’s something with great sentimental value to me.

A better shot of the actual system. They certainly don’t make ‘em like they used to.

Posted in Retro Reviews |