Q*bert had a @!#?@! arcade sequel

Q*bert is getting a lot of press this week, from the record setting attempts by George Leutz and Ed Heemskerk to his appearance in the Academy Award nominated Wreck-It Ralph.

What many don’t know is that the popular 1982 arcade release had a sequel that hardly saw the light of day in video arcades.

Q*bert’s Qubes added a variety of new puzzle elements and characters to the Q*bert world, as now players had to spin various cubes into place in a possible Rubik’s Cube inspired gameplay style.  It proved more challenging than the original game and also quite a bit of fun, but sadly it fell prey to bad timing.

Mylstar, the company who released the game, hit rock bottom at the bank around the same time the game hit the streets.  A release during the Great North American Video Game Crash® also didn’t help get the game much traction.  Q*bert’s Qubes was hardly seen and so unknown that even an overly obsessive gamer such as myself never even knew it existed until the late 1990s.

There were some home versions of the game that slipped out for the consoles of the time, but they may be even more rare than the arcade unit due to the same gaming market crash that plagued the arcades at the time.  While I am not a fan of emulators, MAME players could and should give the game a try or if anyone happens by the famed Funspot arcade in New Hampshire, take a step in there and give it a try in person.

You might agree with me that Q*bert’s Qubes is one of the best kept @!#?@! secrets in arcade history.