The hidden "heart" stage in Arkanoid

[e1will]

Arkanoid fans might find this mildly interesting. I came across a screen that was coded, but never actually appears in the game:

 

 

More details here:

http://willnicholes.com/arkanoid.htm

 

--Will

Edited May 4, 2010 by e1will

[Pyromaniac605]

Strange. Wouldn't have thought there would be any intentionally developed levels hidden. Maybe the bytes it is read just happen to make it that way. But that would be a 1 in 999,999,999,999,999 chance. Nice find!

 

Darren

[A.J. Franzman]

Will, did you happen to read down the third-to-last and second-to-last characters of each row beginning with level 100 in your LEVEL - DISPLAY table?:

 

GAMEOVERROUND_PLAYERREADY_

 

(note that the blanks only appear following the last letter of the words with an odd number of letters)

[e1will]

Will, did you happen to read down the third-to-last and second-to-last characters of each row beginning with level 100 in your LEVEL - DISPLAY table?:

 

GAMEOVERROUND_PLAYERREADY_

 

(note that the blanks only appear following the last letter of the words with an odd number of letters)

 

Very interesting! I didn't notice that. I guess that would explain where those letters came from.

 

--Will

[Crazy Climber]

Nice! I have never even made it close to the end of Arkanoid though, that game is brutally hard for me. I owned a Cocktail version for a year or so but if I was lucky made it to the 20's (stages)

[HFK]

Wow, it is amazing to me what people will find sometimes. Very nice work.

[yuppicide]

Nice work. Interesting find.

[Justin De Lucia]

I am terribly sorry for the two-year-long bump, but I'd absolutely love to go and create new Arkanoid levels to replace the 222 glitch and replica levels, since you do mention a part about "level creation".

[Nukey Shay]

"Never actually appears"? Are you sure of that? Easter eggs often depend on a specific set of circumstances to play out in order to be revealed.

[Justin De Lucia]

I believe by "Never actually appearing", Moonsweeper meant not seen in normal gameplay. Since there's no way to advance beyond DOH's board without cheats, you'd never encounter the heart board. Maybe the heart wasn't an easter egg; it was an intentially-designed level that got scrapped when Taito decided to add a final boss, thus DOH was present instead. And even if the heart was an E-Egg, it'd couldn't really be since you cannot pull off a tricky tactic to see the heart board.

[Nukey Shay]

Somebody has looked though the program code to verify this?

[+OLD CS1]

As my latest act of threadcromancy, I was wondering if there is any information on how the play screens are encoded either in the arcade ROM or on any other platform.