Strange Q*Bert Marquee
by James Bright
(mirrored from http://www.dragonslairii.com )

I have, what appears to be, the "normal," non-rare Q*Bert marquee:

Q*Bert marquee
This is pretty much standard issue.

Or is it?

Marquee back-lit only, no flash

Right where I've circled, is the phrase "Faster, Harder, More Challenging". The lettering looks like it's the original lettering on the marquee. However, it was painted over. It appears to have been painted over before it was released.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to take a picture of the lettering (if you hold it up to the light, or look at it closely when the game is on, you can see it). It does most definately say FHMC, and I'd like to know what it's relationship to the FHMC Q*Bert was. I've done a little bit of research, and verified that you can get the FHMC ROMs (sometimes labeled as FHMC QBert or sqbert).

Another back-lit only, no flash picture

In the above picture, I've removed the marquee and held it up to a flood light. You can just see the beginning of the phrase. In the inset, I've tried to filter out some of the noise to better show the text.

If you have any information about this, please drop me a line... I'm looking at sites like Jeff Lee's The History of Q*Bert, and similar sites. If you have any links that might be of interest, let me know. Thanks!