“When I go, I don’t want there to be morbid f****** crying people. I want people to celebrate my life.” – Ozzy Osbourne, 2005, in an interview with Playboy Magazine, apparently 

July 22nd, 2025, will forever remain the day we lost one of our most revered and cherished Heavy Metal icons: Ozzy Osbourne. In a community that appreciates handheld game consoles above all else, there isn’t a whole lot of room here for the music world, but I’m also an admin of our official Facebook group, and I’ve seen our demographics.

Image Source: Sky News

Statistically speaking, most of us lived in a time where he was a present and influential individual, whether you love or hate his music, heard the infamous “SHAROOOON” from the early 2000s, the biting of the bat head, or at least are aware of the silhouette of a long haired man with circular sunglasses in black with a silver cross. He was truly an icon of his and our time, and an era is truly over with his loss.

At the time of publishing this, it’s been about a week since his passing. But in my spiral of grief, I want to bring some amount of brevity as a means to celebrate who was an exceptionally batshit and enigmatic man.

From The Osbournes (2005?)

Now is a time to relive his myriad of hilarious out-of-context clips online, his music, his life, and perhaps even…his gaming habits? In my own nostalgic reminiscence of Ozzy’s life, I uncovered a fun gaming-related mystery from 2009, and I’m pretty sure we actually solved it.

Ozzy the Gamer

Ozzy as depicted in Brütal Legend (2009)

The Prince of Darkness was not a gamer. His life, love and soul was dedicated to the music he helped craft and the performances he gave, but he is not unknown to the gaming phenomenon as a whole. We see him immortalized in Double Fines 2009 release Brütal Legend, he’s also been featured in mobile games and heavily promoted World of Warcraft amongst other promotional outings. But what about Ozzy’s personal gaming habits?

…And as depicted in World of Warcraft (2009)

By random chance, I came across a 2009 interview conducted by Kotaku writer Mike Fahey during BlizzCon were Ozzy was promoting World of Warcraft and he was asked if there were any video games he was addicted to. In typical Ozzy fashion, complete with a mumbling Brummie accent, here is his verbatim statement as transcribed by Mahey:

“The only one I ever played is that f****** (unintelligible) I got addicted to that instantly years ago was that f****** video game where the f****** guy jumps off the f****** cliff. Sort of this old (well, or whale?). I was playing all f****** night.”

Ozzy, truly a wordsmith of all time. When pressed on what the game actually was, he was already talking about Sharon’s favorite game (It’s Tetris, go figure). While our man wasn’t particularly clear which game he was addicted to, the team at Kotaku hazarded their own guesses: Jungle Hunt, A Pitfall esque platformer first released in the arcade; World Games,

…And Guitar Hero

A mid 80s sports title on home consoles that features cliff diving; and classics Super Mario Bros and Lemmings. They also invited people to make their guess in the comments, but… Those are gone. Searching online also doesn’t help, so what was the game Ozzy was so addicted to?

What We Know

You might have already skimmed the article, but we are here to have fun. Anyways, to figure out what game Ozzy is talking about, what’s the context around his gaming habits? And what is his statement trying to say? Context first, here’s what we publically know about Ozzy:

• He was not an avid gamer
• When he did game, he enjoyed both arcade machines and classic consoles like the Intellivision (Rudy Sarzo’s book Off the Rails – Aboard the Crazy Train in the Blizzard of Ozz)

Now to his statement: There’s no audio so we can only assume that Mahey’s transcribe is accurate:

“I got addicted to that instantly years ago was that-…” 

The game came out years before 2009. This paired with his previous gaming habits, it was probably a vintage title.

“that f****** video game where the f****** guy jumps off the f****** cliff.”

As broad and hilarious of a description this may be, keep in mind he wouldn’t be playing deep digs, but most likely games that were reasonably popular that were simple in scope. And mind you, jumping off a cliff is such a big deal it left the biggest impression on him after many years and drugs later.

“Sort of this old (well, or whale?).”

We know how the Oz-man talked. He’s from Birmingham, England so the word “Well” and “Whale” could sound like either in Brummie. While no other context exists to clarify, I believe he’s saying “Whale” since the adjective “Old” isn’t generally used literally in this dialect and the only thing that can resemble a character here is a whale looking thing, which narrows it down.

“I was playing all f****** night.”

You could assume from this that he’s playing on a home console since public arcades generally close at some point, which is valid, you could also argue that A: It could have been hyperbole for “A very long time”, B: He could have owned a cabinet or C: They just didn’t… kick him out? Also note that Ozzy was shooting from the hip with this answer so his memory could be blurry.

With all of this in mind, here is what I think are reasonable assumptions based on what we have:

• It’s an older game that released between 1980 – 2000
• It was most likely on an arcade cabinet or mainstream home console
• Most likely reasonably popular and simple in scope
• One of the most memorable parts of the game was the ability to jump off a cliff
• “Sort of this old whale.”

This is the point in the article where I should be going over potential candidates on what it might be and then disprove them, but the revelation I came to was so exciting and obvious that I abandoned it all together, so as to not waste your time:

It’s F@!#?@! Q*bert

Non skimmers, I salute you. But this isn’t that large of a stretch. Q*bert was released in 1982 (a few months after the death of guitarist Randy Rhoads) on arcade machines and follows Q*bert, a weird as creature consisting of a head with a bird-esque blow hole mouth and 2 legs. It also speaks a language known as Q*bertese and it’s adorable as hell.

The premise of the game is to hop up and down every block of a cubic structure and change the color to proceed while evading enemies. It’s super simple and is infinitely replayable in a similar structure to Pac-Man, where the enemies get slightly harder and the level comes with a fresh color palette swap each new round.

Image by The King of Grabs

Going off of Ozzy’s quote, the janky controls make it VERY easy to jump off cliffs, to the point you’ll do it by accident quite a few times if you’re new to the game since it relies on up/down left/right movements for diagonals. As for the whale looking thing… well…it’s gotta blowhole on its head and that’s really the only describable aspect of our good old fellow.

Other than that, this game was released for just about everything and it’s addictive loop is more than enough entertainment to pull in our Prince of Darkness, and it might be enough to pull you in too. And you’re in luck, because your preloaded Anbernic nugget probably has 10 or so iterations of this gem on it already. Throw on some Blizzard of Ozz and enjoy a piece of gaming history close to one of the godfathers of Heavy Metal himself!

Big thanks to Matt from Facebook for suggesting Q*bert!

I hope you found this bit of history as fun as I did. For a good amount of us, this loss was a heavy one, but Ozzy as a man was one that lived life to his fullest, a man who truly had his cake and ate it too. No one expected him to live THIS long, yet he made it to 76. He truly lived on new game plus, and he left us a huge legacy and legendary backlog of bangers with his solo act and Black Sabbath.

To go out with a bang would really be underselling it at this point. Ozzy’s final show managed to raise a whopping $200 million for the Birmingham Children’s Hospital which is the highest ever grossed for a concert. If you wish to donate to the same cause, you can do so here.

Parkinson’s is a bitch, a degenerative disease with no cure. If you wish to donate for research and relief, here’s the Michael J. fox Foundation.

What did you think of this article? Do you think we got it wrong and want to give your own guess? Let us know in the comments below, and chat with us in our Discord!

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