marcamy Posted October 15, 2010 Share Posted October 15, 2010 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris++ Posted October 15, 2010 Share Posted October 15, 2010 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homerwannabee Posted October 15, 2010 Share Posted October 15, 2010 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted October 15, 2010 Share Posted October 15, 2010 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)? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldAtarian Posted October 15, 2010 Share Posted October 15, 2010 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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
horseboy Posted October 15, 2010 Share Posted October 15, 2010 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcamy Posted October 15, 2010 Author Share Posted October 15, 2010 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.J. Franzman Posted October 15, 2010 Share Posted October 15, 2010 First release Demon Attack carts deliberately end at a blank black screen after wave 84 (or was it 87? Who counts waves while playing anyway?) Later releases do not end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 2600 Berserk freezes around 82-83k pts on game one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barthax Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 (edited) 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 October 16, 2010 by Barthax Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 (edited) 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 October 16, 2010 by Nukey Shay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvio Mogno Posted October 18, 2010 Share Posted October 18, 2010 ...not so exciting, but when you pass 1 million in Buck Rogers two vertical bars appear at left and right edges of the title screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4ever2600 Posted October 19, 2010 Share Posted October 19, 2010 Hey guys, Donkey Kong kill screen coming up! Cmon couldn't resist... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flammingcowz Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 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.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcamy Posted March 10, 2011 Author Share Posted March 10, 2011 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd30 Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 When you go over 100k in Gorf the score gets garbled - however it is consistent so you can actually figure out your final score Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 I believe River Raid kills you and ends the game when you max out the score. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranthulfr Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 It's not score- or wave-related, but Mountain King will lock up if you wander into the wrong part of the "sky kingdom". There's one spot where the player's sprite super-sizes as the game freezes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pojr Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 Adventure for the 2600 has a kill screen when you complete the game, although that's an obvious example. When you guys say kill screen, you mean as a result of a glitch? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassGuitari Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 How about Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where your game ends with a swift kick in the ass from Loretta Lockhorn? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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