Castle Crisis - Hidden Message!

[Sheddy]

Just wondering - anyone notice the hidden message in the Castle Crisis beta Bry posted here on AA? Have a look through the ROM image with a hex editor (around $38E0) - very interesting - looks like there's an Easter Egg

[DEBRO]

Thanks Sheddy!

Usually I look at the ROMs for this type of thing. I did the same for my post of Climber 5 but I didn't have as much space available

[Sheddy]

Might be helpful if I actually post what it says in there!

 

Hello, and welcome to the Castle Crisis ROM image. I've got a little bit of free space here at the end of bank 1 so here's some info about the game. This project started over 2 years ago because I wanted a portable way to play the awesome Warlords arcade game. I had a 2 player upright machine that I'd converted to 4 player (using modified Atari paddles) and it was a major hit with my friends. This may be why I prefer the upright color scheme - the cocktail just looks too wierd. Anyway, my original goal was to have a 16K A8 cartridge that required 16K of RAM. This eventually grew into the 32K bank switched cartridge that was released. There was just no way to keep it fast and shrink the code enough (6502 code can be very compact, but unrolled stuff is much faster). Another goal was to represent the castles properly as 10x10 character blocks in a 32x30 environment. Since the Antic has no modes even close to this, the castles are managed in 5x7 pixel blocks. This keeps them from having that "stretched-to-fit" look that so many A8 games have. My friends and I have been play-testing it, and I think it preserves the arcade feel quite nicely (for instance, Castle Crisis seems to inspire just as much trash-talk in 4-player mode as Warlords). BTW... press SELECT for extended deathmatch modes, and hold all 4 paddle buttons at start-up for the hidden greetings screen. Game LEDs are supported as well (like those inside the arcade buttons). Pins 1&2 of each game port are pulled low to illuminate a player's LED. Also, the 1200XL's panel LEDs are used. Anyway, the 5200 version is next and will support those wonderful 5200 sticks (ack!) or paddle controllers. -Bry Dec 1, 2003

[Bryan]

Ooops. I shouldn't have put "Since the Antic..." Now I look like an "English as a Second Language" coder.

 

Now, who's actually seen the greetings screen?

 

-Bry

[Bryan]

Here's an avi of the greetings screen. Turn on the computer with all 4 paddle buttons pressed to see it.

 

http://members.core.com/~bryede/cc/ccgrtz.zip

 

(an AVI because it doesn't come out well as a screencap- pause it and you'll see what I mean...zipped due to ISP quota)

 

-Bry