Friday, February 01, 2008

Who is this guy?



Can you see this guy as a video game inventer?


Maybe an accountant but not video games.



25 years ago, Warren Davis created Q-BERT. He created this early 80s game from an inspiration by a programmer who etched cubes on a screen. Davis describes his brainchild:



"When I looked at it, it occurred to me you could sculpt a pyramid out of it such that if a ball fell onto the top, it would have two choices of which way to bounce, so with one random byte I could create a path for a falling ball"


...and so Q-Bert was born.




2 comments:

The Lorax said...

The Tet offensive and the Columbia disaster both occured this day in history... hell, Mayon exploded... Texas succeeded from the Union, and Janet Jackson showed us her boobage.

but, no... you blog on Q-bert.

Dammit, Sabs... you had me at 'Q'.

Scott Sabol said...

Q-Bert was really invented on this day. Honestly, 2 days ago, I found my old Q-bert table top video game in the basement so I looked it up.

No disrespect intended on the other more pertanent historical events such as the Tet Offensive and the Columbia disaster. In fact, my dad left Vietnam the day of the Tet O. He didn't find out until he was over the Pacific on his way home. Most of the locations that he traveled through to get to the airport were destroyed. Talking with him about it is very interesting and surreal.