e1will

This is a hack of Berzerk that changes the individual robots into "Halo 2600" style enemies: 3 copies of each; destroying one destroys all three.

Since three robots means three bullets, the second and third robots on each line will "disappear" whenever the first robot shoots horizontally so that they're not hit by "friendly fire." But beware, as soon as the horizontal bullet hits a barrier, the second and third robots will reappear.

(It's called a "1-bit hack" because I changed only one bit: The "5" at location $f1c9 was changed to a "4".)

Enjoy!

--Will

Earlier this year I got a chance to speak with former Atari game designer Carla Meninsky, of Warlords and Dodge 'Em fame. This was going to be the basis for a newspaper story to run in April to feature the 30th anniversary of the Atari 2600 release of Warlords.

Unfortunately, those plans fell through, and the paper didn't run the piece. But the interview was so darn interesting that I figured, what the heck, I'll just publish it on my own website and let people read it there. Carla talks about the early days at Atari, her eventual transition into an entirely different line of work (law), and shares some interesting stories about the craziness at Atari, including visits with George Lucas and The Muppets.

One fascinating tidbit I never knew: apparently there was a special version of Dodge 'Em commissioned that featured Mercedes garbage trucks instead of racing cars; this was part of a deal that let the Atari execs drive Mercedes.

http://willnicholes....rlaMeninsky.htm

Enjoy!

--Will

Hi all. Is there a good disassembly of Video Pinball around anyplace? I'd like to do a hack that would (1) vary the color scheme based on the score, (2) add a couple of digits onto the score counter, and (3) change the multipliers to hexadecimal (yes, really). I think it would be fun to have start at 0x instead of 1x, then increment up to "F" for a 15x multiplier. Fun, for me at least.

--Will