I went to see Wreck-It Ralph with high expectations and lo and behold! those expectations were matched. Cracking film! It's inspired me to write a little story about poor old Q*Bert. It makes you want to hug the little sprite…

Unplugged

It didn't always use to be this way…

Q*Bert sighed as he remembered the old days; the good old days that were before their machine; their home, had been unplugged.

It hadn't been such a bad life he thought; there had been a certain satisfaction in changing the colours of the cubes as he jumped from each one to the next in isometric style, avoiding the deadly touch of his good old enemies, bless their pixellated hearts, Slick, Sam, Ugg, Wrong-Way and of course, Coily. Sure, they were enemies in the game but once the last quarter ran out and the arcade shut for the night, they really were quite friendly with each other. It wasn't as if Q*Bert had it all his own way as an isometric hero after all; certainly he didn't in the hands of novice gamers, though of course, in the right hands, he could be one lean, mean, arcade character machine whilst traversing the cube pyramid. They used to have parties on top of that thing in the middle of the night when all the customers had gone home. They were good, psychedelic parties.

Somebody was passing. Q*Bert looked up with mournful, soulful eyes and tentatively pushed forward the tin with the sign reading "GAME UNPLUGGED, PLEASE HELP!" When your game was unplugged and you were living it rough in Game Central Station; pride was the first thing that had to go.

He would have liked to speak to the random characters that passed on by, moving from one console to another but the newer ones, the later generation guys, seemed rather confused, perhaps even put off from their prospective charitable donations by his Q*Bert-ese. It wasn't his fault if he couldn't speak the default language; he was simply programmed to have speech bubbles filled with symbols appear in place of default words. If he had a quarter for every time somebody thought he was swearing; then he wouldn't need to be begging in Game Central Station for pixels or polygons; he'd have a hell of a lot of quarters.

The tin rattled. A few chocolate buttons had been dropped in from Sugar Rush. "~#!#!" he called out as he let his fellow co-workers dig in the treats first; the poor things were starving after all and he considered it his responsibility to put his friends and family first.

It had been a while since the tin was last filled; the other characters were probably afraid that old Q*Bert would go Turbo anytime soon if they so much as looked at him and reminded him of how they had games of their own to go back to and Q*Bert no longer had an arcade machine to call home. Q*Bert could never do that though; not only would it be practically impossible for him to do so (could anyone imagine Q*Bert taking over Dance Dance Revolution or Hero's Duty when he had never been in those games before? That really would confuse them especially as the later generation people would never have heard of him) but he didn't want to be responsible for unplugging another console out of spite when those characters hadn't done anything to him. Many of the characters had arrived in the arcade long after his own game had been unplugged. Many others who had had their own games unplugged had committed a Game Over afterwards.

Coily pushed over the remains of the treats before curling back into his usual position; staring forlornly at those who still had games and worlds outside of the Game Central Station. Q*Bert savoured each bite slowly as if they might be his last. An Arcade character couldn't die of starvation as such; they could only die if they were attacked by enemies outside of their own game (which for Q*Bert and co., meant everywhere) but it was damn uncomfortable being hungry all of the time. Perhaps they would go to Tapper's later; they didn't have any money or points as such but the bartender was an understanding fellow providing that the Q*Bert crew promised to work for their free drinks. He was more understanding than the old Burger-Time guy anyway. And no, they weren't just going to drink root beer. The Tapper Bartender served the proper stuff and they needed the proper stuff, never mind the awkward and yet hilarious sight it provoked of seeing a drunken Q*Bert and even more garbled speech bubbles.

"£!*£~$!" Q*Bert growled to himself as he saw Pac-Man eating invisible power pellets in the distance; showing off as usual he supposed. That yellow pill popper had preceded them by at least 2 years! How come he still had his own game after all this time? All he did was run around a maze eating fruit and questionable yellow things and avoiding the attentions of the Pac-Ghosts. Any idiot could do that. Even his wife, Ms Pac-Man, still had a game of her own although as far as he was concerned, he couldn't see any difference. And if her game went, at least she had a husband to go to and she could simply take her bow off so that they could take it in turns as the main character for she looked identical without it. Q*Bert wished he could do that; it would have made things a lot easier.

At least his own game had had an element of puzzle to it unlike the pill-popper and the older generation liked the challenge, made even more challenging by occasionally dodgy controls. Q*Bert wondered how it would feel to be controlled by a joystick again, to have his legs and body move without his say-so but on the command of a few button presses. The NPCs never had to deal with that. Player Possession had at times been incredibly annoying, especially when they had accidentally chucked him off the edge of that pyramid or into the path of the spinning discs but now, he wished for it more than anything in the world.

Q*Bert had to get up and have a walk when he saw the veteran arcade star being approached, no, hounded, by a gaggle of impressionable younger generation stars all desperate to know the secrets of his longevity. At least Mario reinvented himself outside of the arcade with various genres and such or so Q*Bert had heard; information travelled down those wires slowly at times. And at least Mario and his brother Luigi gave his crew food when they had it even if it was only Mushrooms 99% of the time; it was appreciated all of the same. Oh, and he couldn't forget Fix-It Felix Jr. and Wreck-It Ralph; they were nice chaps; Ralph was only a villain when his game called for it after all. He was desperately hoping for another delicious NiceLander's pie or failing that, a cherry snaffled from Pac-Land. He liked those cherries, they were good cherries…

A few dinosaurs ran past from Dinosaur King; almost squashing poor Q*Bert as they trod where they pleased, not taking care or notice of an old, washed-up arcade star such as himself. He was struck by the sheer number of dinosaurs they had in that game although it sorely reminded him of the lack of members in his own little family. It hadn't been big to begin with but they had forever been a member short since the day they had been unplugged.

Poor Sam. Q*Bert had tried getting everybody out there before their machine was unplugged. He had made sure that Coily, Ugg, Wrong-Way and Slick had reached Game Central Station before continuing with his begging attempts to make Sam leave. He understood how important those cubes were to him and those lovely changing colours; he would miss it dearly too. Never would they change each other's colours again on that isometric pyramid. But Q*Bert frantically screamed at Sam, almost hidden behind his symbol speech bubbles, that if they didn't leave in a minute, the arcade was going to close and seeing that people no longer played their machine as much anymore, Mr. Litwak was going to unplug it and it would never be turned on again. And without power, they would die. Sam just sat there, swinging his legs of the topmost cube. He was born in that arcade machine; he was going to die in that arcade machine.

Q*Bert had made a bound for it when he saw the kindly old figure of Mr. Litwak approach the screen. He looked sad; he didn't want to see old Q*Bert go, he was attached to his old arcade cabinets. But the cabinet just wasn't being played with; the customers wanted the latest Light Gun Shooters now and as quirky as Q*Bert was, he just didn't garner the respect that Pac-Man and Fix-It Felix Jr. did.

Q*Bert only just made it to Game Central System before a series of red lines blocked the entrance to their game. Sam couldn't change his mind about escaping now and Q*Bert could only imagine what horror his old enemy, his old friend, would go through as he was sucked down into the hidden depths of the code, his body broken down into numbers before being broken down into sheer nothing as the cabinet was sold for scrap. Code could not be rebuilt if its main components had been thoroughly demolished as he knew in the bottom of his pixellated heart. Oh, sweet Atari, why had it come to this? Why did they have to suffer such a fate?

Desperate times call for desperate measures, Q*Bert thought miserably to himself. Even as Sonic repeated his warning of "If you die outside your own game, you won't regenerate ever! Game Over!", Q*Bert put up a new sign next to the tin reading "WILL NPC IN FPS 4 FOOD!" Coily raised an eyebrow but he didn't object; he'd star as an NPC too if it came down to it. Of course, they would have to choose the correct cabinet where their presence would not be considered quite so odd; that ruled out House of the Dead for a start-off. Somehow, it would not do for their colourful, child appeal designs to feature alongside Cyril the axe-wielding zombie. But then, would they even be considered to star as NPCs or just ruled out as attempting a sneaky, underhand method of going Turbo?

What a miserable existence. This was like having a permanent INSERT COIN[S] sign plastered across their screen with not a quarter in sight or being. In times of uncertainty for those with games, it was a warning as to your health being sorely depleted. They went through the game motions when that sign was up hoping to catch the eyes of the punters. Without those punters, that little sign might even mean a Game Over. Somebody could go Turbo.

But Q*Bert wasn't about to go Turbo or commit a Game Over. He had his little family to consider. He didn't know how and he didn't know when, but one day surely, Q*Bert and his crew would be given an extra life and hopefully, gain another continue. Perhaps the best thing to do in that time was to write another little sign to get his point across. Then they would truly understand their situation.

INSERT COIN[S].