Jump to content
IGNORED

Atari 2600 kill screens


marcamy

Recommended Posts

First time poster, long time lerker...

 

Does anyone know of, or had anyone ever come across any kill screen situations for Atari 2600 games?

 

This does not include max out scores nor easter eggs, just lack of memory for the game to end like a Donkey Kong Coin-op. For instance, say while playing a game for a long time, then a sudden abnormal looking screen appears and you just cant score any more points, or your lives are killed off for no particular reason at a certain point of the game.

 

-Marc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Technically Galaxian does have a Kill screen, but you would essentially have to play a non-stop perfect game for 350 straight hours, and somehow get over 136 reserve lives to crash the game. Since the record for playing even the simplist video game is 85 straight hours I can't possibly see that ever happening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not necessarily a "perfect" game in 2600 Galaxian...just playing long enough to roll the score at least that number of times (because bonus ships are ONLY awarded from passing 6k into 7k, but the program never checks if the score had rolled). You could lose ships in the meantime, but that would make it necessary to roll the score an additional time for each ship you've lost. When trying to read the vector table for reserve GFX, this inadvertantly reaches to the bankswitch hotspot and reboots the game.

 

BTW arcade DK doesn't feature a kill screen due to lack of memory, but because of how the initial value for the bonus timer is calculated (resulting in a bonus time that is too short to pass the level).

 

Are you looking for intentional kill screens (such as Demon Attack or most of Activision's games), or unintentional kill screens (such as Galaxian)?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not necessarily a "perfect" game in 2600 Galaxian...just playing long enough to roll the score at least that number of times (because bonus ships are ONLY awarded from passing 6k into 7k, but the program never checks if the score had rolled). You could lose ships in the meantime, but that would make it necessary to roll the score an additional time for each ship you've lost. When trying to read the vector table for reserve GFX, this inadvertantly reaches to the bankswitch hotspot and reboots the game.

 

BTW arcade DK doesn't feature a kill screen due to lack of memory, but because of how the initial value for the bonus timer is calculated (resulting in a bonus time that is too short to pass the level).

 

Are you looking for intentional kill screens (such as Demon Attack or most of Activision's games), or unintentional kill screens (such as Galaxian)?

 

I can see an arcade machine having kill screens because they don't want one person hogging the machine for hours on the same quarter, but why would they do that on a home game?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not necessarily a "perfect" game in 2600 Galaxian...just playing long enough to roll the score at least that number of times (because bonus ships are ONLY awarded from passing 6k into 7k, but the program never checks if the score had rolled). You could lose ships in the meantime, but that would make it necessary to roll the score an additional time for each ship you've lost. When trying to read the vector table for reserve GFX, this inadvertantly reaches to the bankswitch hotspot and reboots the game.

 

BTW arcade DK doesn't feature a kill screen due to lack of memory, but because of how the initial value for the bonus timer is calculated (resulting in a bonus time that is too short to pass the level).

 

Are you looking for intentional kill screens (such as Demon Attack or most of Activision's games), or unintentional kill screens (such as Galaxian)?

 

I can see an arcade machine having kill screens because they don't want one person hogging the machine for hours on the same quarter, but why would they do that on a home game?

 

As far as I know none of the arcade kill screens are intentional.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for all the replies...

 

To be more specific, I raised the topic since I "unintentionally" came across a game that I recently played for a little over an hour, and several 1 million rollovers. After waive 221 or so, an unusual looking board appeared, cleared it, but it was impossible to score any more points afterwards and advance to the next board. This then forced me to purposely end my game by killing off my remaining ships. The game kept going, and did not reset on me.

 

I am not sure if Demon Attack ends this way or simply resets at the last wave. Either way, that one is a great example of a kill screen in my eyes too. I understand there were other Demon Attack carts issued afterwards that do not reset. Then again, maybe they do at a certain point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2600 Berserk freezes around 82-83k pts on game one.

 

Actually, that one has been proven to be a timed-based kill. The game counts time while your character is not moving. After something like 17 minutes of total inactivity throughout the game, it kills you off. Someone surpassed 1m recently & the footage is on one of the broadcast sites (ustream.tv). Don't stop moving!

 

[Edit:]

Linkage: debug here - about half way down, posted by Rev John. Link further into the thread for the mill+ attempt by Zimmzamm.

Edited by Barthax
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2600 Berserk freezes around 82-83k pts on game one.

 

Actually, that one has been proven to be a timed-based kill. The game counts time while your character is not moving. After something like 17 minutes of total inactivity throughout the game, it kills you off. Someone surpassed 1m recently & the footage is on one of the broadcast sites (ustream.tv). Don't stop moving!

 

[Edit:]

Linkage: debug here - about half way down, posted by Rev John. Link further into the thread for the mill+ attempt by Zimmzamm.

I'll have to try that again then. Last time it froze on me in mid-shot! :ponder:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah...in Berzerk, the timer for attract mode is allowed to go up during active games. The bug comes from not resetting the timer when the stick IS moved. It takes a total of 2 bytes to fix the glitch (simply store the current small value from A into the timer).

 

Follow this...

   lda SWCHA                        ; read the joystick values
  lsr                              ; shift player1's values to lower nybbles
  lsr
  lsr
  lsr
  eor #$0F                         ; flip the bits so high bit shows movement
  and #$0F                         ; SUPERFLUOUS...mask the upper nybbles
  bne .setPlayerDirection          ; branch if joystick being moved
  lda #PLAYER_STAND_ANIM_OFFSET    ; Otherwise, reset the player sprite
  sta playerAnimationIndex         ; ..
  sta playerGraphicLSB             ; ..
  sta playerMotion                 ; reset player fractional movement delay
  lda frameCount                   ; get current frame count
  bne CheckForFireButtonPressed    ; branch if not rolled over from 255
  inc attractModeTimer             ; increment attract mode timer
  bne CheckForFireButtonPressed    ; branch if not rolled over from 255
  lda gameSelection                ; get current game selection
  jmp SetGameSelection             ; make game go into attract mode

.setPlayerDirection
  sta playerDirection              ; save as player direction

 

With this...

   sta attractModeTimer             ; BIGFIX...use A to also reset the timer

 

That causes the code to be +2 bytes. You can fix the file size by eliminating the superfluous AND #$0F in the first part above (the preceding LSR x 4 means that nothing exists in the upper nybble anyway...so there is no reason to strip it). If using a bithacker to do this, you'd need to adjust the 2 "CheckForFireButtonPressed" branch destinations by +2.

 

(Variable names taken from Debro's disassembly).

Edited by Nukey Shay
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks for all the replies...

 

To be more specific, I raised the topic since I "unintentionally" came across a game that I recently played for a little over an hour, and several 1 million rollovers. After waive 221 or so, an unusual looking board appeared, cleared it, but it was impossible to score any more points afterwards and advance to the next board. This then forced me to purposely end my game by killing off my remaining ships. The game kept going, and did not reset on me.

 

I am not sure if Demon Attack ends this way or simply resets at the last wave. Either way, that one is a great example of a kill screen in my eyes too. I understand there were other Demon Attack carts issued afterwards that do not reset. Then again, maybe they do at a certain point.

 

what game was it? i'm guessing defender..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Thanks for all the replies...

 

To be more specific, I raised the topic since I "unintentionally" came across a game that I recently played for a little over an hour, and several 1 million rollovers. After waive 221 or so, an unusual looking board appeared, cleared it, but it was impossible to score any more points afterwards and advance to the next board. This then forced me to purposely end my game by killing off my remaining ships. The game kept going, and did not reset on me.

 

I am not sure if Demon Attack ends this way or simply resets at the last wave. Either way, that one is a great example of a kill screen in my eyes too. I understand there were other Demon Attack carts issued afterwards that do not reset. Then again, maybe they do at a certain point.

 

what game was it? i'm guessing defender..

 

 

The game was Solar Fox by CBS Electronics.

Apologize for the late response, but better late than never. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only ones I can think of at the moment are the original Demon Attack release, and Fire Fighter (playing Game 9 eventually leads to a glitched screen with a flattened building). Funny; they're both by Imagic.

 

Never heard of that happening with "Fire Fighter". But that has to be the most interesting thing about an extremely dull game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...