Q*ber is a Q*bert-style arcade game. You are Q*ber, “a lonely inhabitant of the planet Cubicus”, and you hop diagonally across a pyramid of cubes, changing the shade of each cube you land on while avoiding the meanies. On level one each cube must be landed on once, on level two at least twice, and so on. It plays with a joystick or with the keys 2 (up-left), 9 (up-right), Q (down-left) and P (down-right), and the keys can be redefined.
Q*ber was written by Eric Boisvert and published on the December 1986 – January 1987 tape of Byte Power (©1987).
Program Analysis
The BASIC is a loader. Line 9000 shows “STILL LOADING…” and loads the 13,382-byte code block Q*ber mc at 48058, then RUN reaches line 3, LET l=USR 48058: RANDOMIZE USR 0, which starts the game and resets the computer when it returns. Line 2 lists the save lines instead if PEEK 23681 is 0, the magazine’s method for making a backup copy. The game itself is machine code; the messages in it include the redefine-keys prompts, the level counter and the “GAME OVER” screen.
Image Gallery
Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.