So by now all of you who wanted to see Wreck-it-Ralph have seen it and have probably familiarized yourself with this guy.

This is Q*Bert, popular 80s arcade game character. Yeah I know he looks like the secret lovechild of PacMan and an aardvark but at the time his game came out he rivaled PacMan and Donkey Kong in populairity. He had toys, was part of the Saturday Supercade TV show that did cartoons based on Frogger, Pitfall, and Donkey Kong along with Q*Bert which was a weird show that gave Q*Bert arms and put him in a sort of 1950s setting where his nemesis Coily the Snake was the leader of a biker gang. Hey, if you thought Mario's minimal plot was hard to make a show out of, the nonexistent plots of early arcade games were even harder for those unfamiliar with the character outside of his cameo in Disney's homage to video games, he's a quick vid summing up Q*Bert's populairity. Game Informer also did a nice article on the creation and popularity of the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2v3d1af2H4

So like his arcade contemporaries, Q*Bert got ported to every game console including a 1:1 port on the NES but sadly, he faded away despite having some updated versions on the PS1 and Dreamcast. On the upside he didn't get drug through the mud like Pacman did for a while there. Remember the more recent 3D PacMan games like Pac-Man World where he was basically doing 3D platforming like a wannabe Mario. Not to mention his Mario Kart and Mario Party knockoffs. In the end I feel like fading into obscurity is better than wallowing in s$#&.

Still in this day and age with all download services making so many old games available, there would surely be someplace to download Q*Bert and have some nostalgia right? Checked PSN and despite hearing that it was one of the first old arcade games for download it appears to have been removed. Checked the app store. No Q*Bert. Checked the 3DS shop. No Q*Bert. Virtual Console? Nope. Not even Steam which has everything. Any of you 360 owners find it on XBLA? Feel free to post in the comments.

And suddenly I felt kind of sad. Of all the video game character cameos in Wreck-it-Ralph, Q*Bert was the only one who actually had some involvment in the plot. And I distinctly remember the audience going "awwwww" when they saw Q*Bert and pals sitting in game central, homeless because their game got unplugged. Luckily Ralph does something nice for Q*Bert at the end.

But I don't know, it's a shame that despite being one of the more iconic arcade games, there's no way for anyone to experience this game. And I feel like Q*Bert deserves better than that. The game was made by Gottleb which I don't even think is a game company anymore so who knows who owns the rights to him. Maybe Disney? They own everything else now right? But it's not just rereleasing Q*Bert on the download services. What about this?

Seriously if you haven't played this, it's free to PSN+ users. They took everything that was great about PacMan and ramped it up to 11. Great fast paced action, online leaderboards, clever modes the additon of bombs expanded on a great formula without ruining what made the original fun. And PacMan wasn't the only one, there's a Frogger that takes the same route and this whole explosion of retro game updates. Why can't Q*Bert get the "Champioinship Edition DX" treatment?

And maybe I'm just being old and nostalgic but I'm just saying, can't we get a little love for Q*Bert?