Review - Q*Bert's Qubes (Arcade, 1983)

This review is part of a series focused on games I spent time with during my most recent trip to Funspot. To view the complete list so far, click the Funspot tag at the end of this post!

For an extensive history of Q*Bert, be sure to check out this article by Warren Davis.

After the success of Q*Bert in 1982, Neil Burnstein took over from creator Warren Davis and developed Q*Bert's Qubes, a sequel that shook up the familiar formula of the original game. Q*Bert artist Jeff Lee worked with Burnstein and created a new series of monsters to torment the rude orange blob monster hero, including a purple rat that serves as this game's equivalent of the original's snake. Meanwhile, Davis worked on his own sequel, entitled Faster Harder More Challenging Q*Bert which also introduced new enemies and new rules, but was sadly never released. While I'm a big fan of Q*Bert, I actually prefer Qubes to the original game.

Review - Q*Bert (Arcade, 1982)

 
This review is part of a series focused on games I spent time with during my most recent trip to Funspot. To view the complete list so far, click the Funspot tag at the end of this post!


For an extensive history of Q*Bert, be sure to check out this article by Warren Davis.

In 1982, Warren Davis and Jeff Lee introduced one of arcade's most iconic figures: The foul-mouthed, long-nosed orange blob monster Q*bert. Players bounce Q*bert up and down a pyramid of cubes, changing the colors of the platforms he lands on with each hop, with the end goal being to turn all of the panels a certain color. Along the way, Q*Bert is plagued by green creatures that reverse his cube coloring progress, hungry purple snakes, and the ever present danger of accidentally jumping off the side of the pyramid if you're not used to the game's controls (far more likely on console ports than in an arcade.) With each death, Q*bert belched out a hearty @!#?@!

Review - Space Fury (Arcade, 1981)

This review is part of a series focused on games I spent time with during my most recent trip to Funspot. To view the complete list so far, click the Funspot tag at the end of this post!

Sega's 1981 arcade title Space Fury is a vector-graphics shooter in which players pilot a spaceship against waves of enemy fighters commanded by a large-brained alien overlord. The game uses the same control scheme as Atari's 1979 hit Asteroids; two buttons rotate the player's ship left and right, a third fires, and a fourth controls the ship's forward thrust. Ships wrap around the edges of the screen and things quickly get pretty chaotic. Unlike Asteroids, players can upgrade their weapons between stages, giving each wave a unique feel.

Review - Tron (Arcade, 1982)

This review is part of a series focused on games I spent time with during my most recent trip to Funspot. To view the complete list so far, click the Funspot tag at the end of this post!

Bally/Midway's arcade adaptation of Tron was released in 1982 as a tie in for the film, released the same year. Tron includes four short mini games, each of which must be cleared before players can move on to a new difficulty level. Each game is unique in design but lasts only a few seconds, making Tron feel like some sort of slower precursor to Nintendo's Wario Ware series. It would be followed a year later by Discs of Tron, a completely separate game focusing on only one type of gameplay.

Review - Star Wars (Arcade, 1983)

This review is part of a series focused on games I spent time with during my most recent trip to Funspot. To view the complete list so far, click the Funspot tag at the end of this post!

Atari's 1983 Star Wars game is the first of several arcade Star Wars titles the company would develop during the 80's. It is a first-person vector-graphics shooter that puts players in the role of Luke Skywalker during his assault on the Death Star in the original Star Wars film, in spite of the game being released after Return of the Jedi had already come out in theaters. Atari would follow this game up a year later, out of sequence with the films, with an arcade game based on Return of the Jedi that used pixel art and an isometric view. They would return to the simple vector style displayed in the first game for their third Star Wars arcade title, based on The Empire Strikes Back.

Review - The Glob (Arcade, 1983)

This is the first review in a series focused on games I spent time with during my most recent trip to Funspot. Be sure to request games for me to cover the next time I go!

Released by Epos in 1983, The Glob (alternately titled Super Glob) is an obscure maze game that runs off of converted Pac-Man hardware. Players control a hungry blue blob monster as it avoids legions of blob-biting rabbits, frogs, pigs, alligators, and apes. As with many maze games, the objective is to eat all of the food on screen, which in this game is actual food instead of just dots. Rather than navigating a top-down maze as in Pac-Man, The Glob is viewed from a side scrolling perspective and focuses on using elevators to move from floor to floor in some sort of hog infested post-apocalyptic supermarket.

Review - Contra (Arcade)

Konami's 1987 platformer/shooter Contra is a classic of the genre and remains one of its strongest specimens. While there have been around a dozen sequels, I honestly don't think any of them are as good as the original game, though its very first sequel, Super Contra, comes close. While its sequels drown out the play field in bullets, explosions, monsters, and speed, the original Contra is actually a game meant to be taken slowly and carefully, thinking about each step you take. While best known by its NES port, the arcade version of Contra is a superior game with better graphics, fairer gameplay (with a couple of exceptions) and tighter control.

Review - The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

There's something special about seeing a place you know well make an appearance in a movie. A shot of the Boston skyline might not do a whole lot for me, but a shot of a train station I went to regularly throughout college? That makes me smile. It's even better when that place is crucial to the film's setting. Funspot, in Laconia, NH,  is one of my favorite places to stop by on vacation, and my wife and I try to make a trip up there at least once a year. It's the largest classic gaming arcade in the world, and there are a lot of good memories there. When I found out a documentary was filmed there, I knew I had to see it, even if it ended up taking me a few years to actually get around to it. The film is Seth Gordon's King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a chronicle of two men with a serious devotion to Donkey Kong.

Review - Star Trek (Arcade, 1983)

When I first played Sega's 1983 arcade shooter based on the original Star Trek, I had no idea what was going on. I seemed unable to take damage, almost no enemies appeared, and the game ended after I defeated a Klingon Bird of Prey in the fourth stage. I assumed I just didn't get the game, but it seems that something had actually gone wrong with it. I recently returned to Funspot and gave it another shot, and this time, the game actually worked! I'm re-reviewing it now that I've actually had a chance to play it and know what was going on.

Review - Crazy Kong

Donkey Kong's one of my all time favorites and is one of the more universally known arcade games. Along with Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga duo machines, Donkey Kong/Mario Bros. machines are one of the few classic arcade games I still see in random movie theaters and malls. People still like these games and still play them, and somehow, Nintendo still hasn't released an arcade perfect Donkey Kong on a home system. This isn't a Donkey Kong review, though. Not really.

Two of my favorite arcade games, side by side, at Funspot, 2010

Review - Burger Time

BurgerTime (1982) is probably my favorite arcade game that I'm terrible at. I can survive pretty well in Pengo, Xevious, Dig Dug, and other arcade games that I play whenever I find a machine, but BurgerTime kills me horribly. I still love it.

Review - Pengo

Released in 1982, Pengo is a maze game in which the player attempts to squish weird snow monsters by pushing blocks into them or, in a truly harsh act, destroying their eggs before they can hatch. Diamond-shaped blocks can be lined up for huge bonuses in the midst of all the monster squishing. The player controls Pengo, a sassy penguin with an appetite for destruction.