Remember Q*bert? We hung out at an arcade with the Chicagoan who created ‘80s video games — here’s what he @!#?@ showed us
CHICAGO -- I met the Q*bert Guy in suburban Brookfield, Illinois, the other day.
That’s how my editor referred to him — the Q*bert Guy. That’s how I referred to him — the Q*bert Guy. Which is an impolite way to introduce you to Warren Davis. But that’s who he is: Warren Davis, the Q*bert Guy. He knows this. I had been planning to meet with him for so long that as we walked along Ogden Avenue to Galloping Ghost Arcade, I half-expected drivers to shout from passing cars: “Hey, Q*bert Guy!” If they were Gen X, they might. If they spent too much time in dark, seedy arcades in the ‘80s, they might. Assuming anyone knew what designers of classic video games looked like. Forty years ago, when Davis co-created the once-ubiquitous Q*bert, like many of the early architects of gaming culture, he was just an anonymous Chicago video game designer.
Forty years later, he’s still anonymous.
He doesn’t wear obscurity as a burden. Despite creating
