Q*bert - The original game
Q*bert was programmed by Gottlieb in 1982. The arcade game inspired a plethora of ports to many home computers in the early 80s, including several clones for the Amstrad CPC (Er*bert and Englebert). Despite this, there has never been a version for the Amstrad Plus machines that takes advantage of its advanced capabilities. CPSoft hope to release a faithful rendition of the game for the Amstrad Plus platform.
Proposed features
- Graphically as close as possible to the arcade version as the Amstrad allows
- Multicoloured hardware sprites
- All the original game mechanics, levels and sprites to be recreated
- Two player option
- Hopefully Q*bert's speech to be recreated by synthesis software
- Joystick enabled menu and scoreboard controls for GX4000
- Cartridge version, floppy disc and cassette version
Still to do
- Sound effects for different enemies (possibly a more authentic bounce sound for Q*bert if it is possible to convert it from the arcade version)
- Slow and fast speeds for different enemies?
- Increasing game pace in later rounds if the Z80 interrupt system can handle it
- Next level music (there seem to be different tunes for each level in the arcade version)
- Unfortunately I'm not sure whether sampled speech will be possible as the Speaker software speech synthesizer disables the interrupts and uses a lot of CPU time to process the sound
Making Q*bert
Developing Q*bert PDF - How I developed Q*bert from the original arcade game