Lost In Translation/Q*bert's Qubes

About The Game
Q*bert's Qubes is an arcade video platform game where the object is to jump around diamond formation of 25 cubes and rotate them so that one or more rows of cubes match the shown target cube (a tic-tac-toe) while avoiding the meltniks, the rat and the purple guys. Jumping on anything green is safe, catching the turtle slows down enemies for a short time and catching the freeze ball freezes enemies for a short time.

Each level has four rounds and a bonus round and there are 11 levels...
 * Level 1 : get 1 tic-tac-toe, cubes only have 2 colours
 * Level 2 : get 1 tic-tac-toe, cubes only have 3 colours
 * Level 3 : get 1 tic-tac-toe, cubes have 6 colours from this point on
 * Level 4 : get 2 tic-tac-toes
 * Level 5 : get 3 tic-tac-toes
 * Level 6 : get 1 tic-tac-toe, matched target cubes can be rotated
 * Level 7 : get 2 tic-tac-toes, matched target cubes can be rotated
 * Level 8 : get 3 tic-tac-toes, matched target cubes can be rotated
 * Level 9 : get 4 tic-tac-toes
 * Level 10 : get 3 tic-tac-toes, matched target cubes can be rotated
 * Level 11 : get 3 tic-tac-toes

After this levels 9-11 repeat indefinitely.

Trivia
This game was the first to have used both Mylstar and Gottlieb (Gottlieb was renamed Mylstar not too soon after the game was released, Warren Davis also joked that Mylstar is Rat Slime spelled backwards) on two different versions of the marquee).

A Votrax SC-01 speech synthesis chip is used to generate the incoherent speech of Q*bert swearing, Shoobops (high pitch) and Wrong Way and Ugg (low pitch). The only true speech ever generated is 'Hello, I'm turned on' when the game is first powered up and 'Bye Bye' after entering your initials at the end of a game.

The Rubik's Cube craze of the time served as a source of inspiration for this game.

Jean Baudin holds the official records for this game in 'hard Difficulty' setting with 2,146,905 points on 09/27/2001.

Series

 * 1) Q*bert (1982)
 * 2) Q*bert's Qubes (1983)
 * 3) Q*bert 3 (1993, Nintendo Super Famicom)

Staff

 * Programmed By:
 * Neil Burnstein


 * Graphics By:
 * Jeff Lee


 * Audio By:
 * David Thiel


 * Cabinet Graphics By:
 * Terry Doerzaph

Ports

 * Consoles :
 * Atari 2600
 * Colecovision


 * Computers :
 * MSX (1986)