Season 13 ~ Week 2 ~ Q*Bert

[+jgkspsx]

OK, I figured out Carnival a little:

 

34010

[kermit73]

Q*Bert: 85500

 

This game provides more of a challenge than I remember from playing it back in the day.  I must've been playing on Difficulty B since I recall being able to roll the score easily.

 

If I have more time later in the week, I may still try to hit rollage with Difficulty A, but this will be easier said than done.  The game gets crazy difficult once you hit Level 5 (the 17th board).  The most reliable path to rollage may be to develop some patterns, but this would be quite time consuming and I think if you screw up a pattern at any point, none of your patterns will work for the rest of the game.

 

Some tips:

• Rather than holding the joystick diagonally, I found that it's easier to keep the joystick in its normal position (fire button to the upper left).  After a few games, I got used to which direction I needed to move the joystick to navigate appropriately.
• When using the middle set of discs (next to the third row of cubes from the top), if Coily is above you on the second row, rather than jumping off the pyramid, he will sometimes move to the top of the pyramid and kill you when you arrive there on your disc.  When possible, try to have Coily approach you from the lower half of the pyramid when using these discs.
• I'm not positive this is the best way to go, but I've found that my highest scores are when I blitz through each pyramid as fast as possible.  This doesn't score as many points on the early levels and it does advance you to the harder pyramids (which have to be hit twice, revert colors, etc.) quicker, but I get the impression that difficulty in terms of speed/frequency/number of balls the game throws at you is not based on which board you are on, but is instead based on a timer, the number of times Coily has hatched, or the number of discs used.  Clearing boards quickly earns you more end of round bonus points and may give you fewer balls to contend with when you initially get to the harder pyramids.
• After using a disc, if you move off the top cube right away you will occasionally get killed because a ball unexpectedly appears.  There are a couple ways to reduce the likelihood of this happening.  The safest option is to just wait for the next ball to show up and go the other direction, but this does slow down your progress through the game.  The more difficult option is to observe the timing of the bounces and how they sync with Coily's sound effect, keep that cadence going in your head while on the disc, and time your movement off the top block accordingly.

 

 

 

 

[Jason_Atari]

57,900

 

 

[RGC]

15,075

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by RGC
Updated score

[tripled79]

29100

 

[AtariSphinx]

Qbert (1 A/A): 60,175

Carnival (1 A/A): 56,460

 

Some improvement in Qbert.   Posting Carnival score as not sure will have much more time later this week.

[+Atari_Warlord]

Q*bert 1A/1A = 16,950

Carnival 1A/1A = 26,740

 

I've always struggled with the controls on Q*bert, so it is what it is.

 

 

[IntellivisionMaster]

Q-Bert A/A 30,500 first time playing. Controls are … “Ouch”. 

Carnival A/A 67,280 first time playing. Good port! 

 

[tripled79]

52450

 

 

[Absalon]

Small improvement for me: 44175

 

 

[Absalon]

And a new score: 49525

 

 

[Absalon]

Actually this is the first game we play here, where the difference between ntsc and pal seems to be quite big.

 

The colors of the pal game are not set up properly. While coil is purple in ntsc, it is more pink in pal. The red balls are kind of pink too. So it's much harder to see where coil is. At least it is like this here on my setup. (Tested card and rom)

 

On the other hand the pal game seems to start much much slower. 

 

Are there other pal players here with similar impressions?

 

[Lauren Tyler]

30,250

Barely any improvement.  Those stupid whammy balls always get me.

[Tituzzz]

Yeahh. 

[Redmiller]

I know this score stinks, but If I don't get anymore time this week, i at least wanted to get something on the board.

Never played the expert level before, will have to figure it out. 

 

[Krytol]

Q*Bert 1a/a: 11875

 

 

[Absalon]

and my Carnival Game 1 A/A bonus score: 54020

 

 

[Jasonhrb]

I love Q-bert, and this is almost a textbook 2600 Conversion of a great arcade game. Graphics and sound both recognisable as being the arcade but a bit stripped down. A few compromises to make the game "fit", but the fun and feel of the arcade game still very much intact. I like this game very much . . .  .justa shame I'm not very good at it.

 

Anyway, enough of that, here's a (not very good) score :

 

As for Carnival, this is fun. Really well programmed, and an enjoyable little blast. And the upside of my being rubbish at Q-bert is that I get my bonus points for the Carnival score. .  . . silver linings and all that 😄

Edited August 25, 2022 by Jasonhrb

[Alicetwopointoh]

PHEW!!!! I never thought id ever get good at Q-bert. This took so long to break 44k, (my previous score) no carnival score for now im having lots of trouble with it lol. 61,325!

 

[gbag]

36,725 for gbag…love this game!!!

[Vocelli]

Vocelli:

Qbert Game 1 A: 38825

 

[kermit73]

On 8/24/2022 at 12:46 PM, Absalon said:

Actually this is the first game we play here, where the difference between ntsc and pal seems to be quite big.

 

The colors of the pal game are not set up properly. While coil is purple in ntsc, it is more pink in pal. The red balls are kind of pink too. So it's much harder to see where coil is. At least it is like this here on my setup. (Tested card and rom)

 

On the other hand the pal game seems to start much much slower. 

 

Are there other pal players here with similar impressions?

 

I just tried both versions on Stella to see if I observed the same thing.

 

You are correct on both the colors and the game speed.

 

At least on my screen, it was near impossible to distinguish the pink ball with the red balls.  There were a couple times this messed me up since a ball that I was expecting to bounce off the bottom of the pyramid turned into Coily.  If I played the PAL version more, this might be less an issue since I'm currently so accustomed to the purple color of Coily on the NTSC version.

 

The slower speed of the PAL version is very noticeable.  Even the sound effect when you first power up the console plays back at a slower speed.

 

I would rate the difficulty of both versions to be about the same.  The slower speed does allow for more reaction time, but for me personally, this made little to no difference since both Q*Bert and all the enemy objects are slowed at the same rate.  I didn't play enough games to push to the higher levels of the game.  If I did, it's possible game speed would play a more significant role in the difficulty. I think that any advantage gained from the slower speed is more than compensated by the messed up colors.

[Redmiller]

16,900  is my new score.

[gbag]

41,550 for gbag

[chavert]

.

Edited September 8, 2023 by chavert