“QB” was written by Andrew Davie when he was still at school, and was released to the Melbourne Atari User’s Group around 1986, for free. The game is still available online for download/play but was never published.

The goal of the game is simple: you slide blocks into a pattern, as shown in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. You can only move the blocks you are standing on, and you can only jump onto other blocks that you are directly next to. Fruit will appear as bonuses, and monsters will try to kill you or slide the blocks around, slowing your progress. Your only defence against the monsters is to use the fire button, to throw away anything about to hit you. But there is a limited number of times that you can do this, and this is based on your score.

Description from the Atari Times: http://www.ataritimes.com/article.php?showarticle=302

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Andrew Davie recalls:

“QB” was written on a single disk system, and the source code was so large that I had to resort to single-letter variable and branch names (and, of course, absolutely no comments) just to fit the code onto the disk! … The graphics were pushing the machine so much that, to draw the cubes quickly enough, I had to do inline hardwired draw code (that is, no data… the routines did actual load/mask/stores to draw the cubes). Took me ages to get it done, but it was pretty quick when running… The game took something like 9 months to write.”

(From An Interview With QB Creator Andrew Davieby Marty “Retro Rogue” Goldberg in Classic Gaming
http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=261)

QB

In 2001, Andrew Davie released a version of QB for the Atari 2600. The game is top-down, rather than the 3d axonometric look of the original, making it easier to play. Only fifty signed and boxed copies of the game were made available to retro Atari fans, through Atari Age and other fan groups.
Platform/s: Atari 2600
Developer: Andrew Davie – Design, Graphics, Programming

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