Re: Asteroids cheat (again)

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 11/22/2004 at 9:28 AM Neil Bradley wrote:

>> I hate to re-post this, but I only got one reply last
>> time and it didn't solve the issue. I have a customer
>> who REALLY wants his Asteroids to have the score cheat
>> that is mentioned on so many web sites as being in the
>> original version of the ROMs. Unfortunately, neither
>> he nor I can make it work. I've tried both original
>> and version 2 roms in the original hardware and even
>> tried it in MAME and could not seem to make it work
>> anywhere. Does anyone know for sure that this cheat
>> exists and if so, how to go about doing it? I
>> appreciate anyone's help in figuring this out.
>
>Perhaps my perspective will help -
>
>I believe it's a hoax, much like the rumors of being able to drive to the
>mountains in Battlezone. I've heard of this "cheat" since 1996 when I
>wrote EMU (old vector emulator that predates MAME). With version 1 ROMs,
>and I'll repeat, with version 1 ROMs, I have tried this no less than 30
>times. I had owned an Asteroids upright, version 1, since the mid 80s and
>have also tried it countless times and had never been successful.
>
>More telling, I've found and looked at the collision detection code in
>Asteroids rev 1 and there is NOTHING that would exclude a region. There is
>no relationship to the scores or any of the text in terms of collision
>detection. They are handled by completely separate sections of the code.
>Coding up something to specifically do what is being claimed would have to
>be deliberate.
>
>I'm convinced that it's a fool's errand to look for it. Just one of those
>tales of arcade folklore.

Sort of off-topic, since it's a raster game, but anyway...

I watched a guy "back in the day" (1979) shoot all but the lower two levels of invaders in Space Invaders, and what was left froze. The game was still playable, but the rest of the invaders in the current board quit marching. Looking back, I remember seeing him do it twice in the same game. Everyone thinks I'm crazy when I mention this, and the guy I turned the MAME (formally Retrocade) history database over to won't even put it in the database, but I swear it happened. Watching the invaders march, it seems near impossible. But there's that little time period where they're shifting and the upper invaders are moved ahead a little bit more than the lower ones. Someone was going to check the code for me to see if they could actually find this cheat, but he has a notoriously bad habit of not answering his emails for some stupid reason (I won't name any names, but most of you know who he is).

Brian

-------
Brian Deuel
Real Estate Appraiser
MI Lic. #1201070632

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Received on Mon Nov 22 20:43:48 2004