RAM address $9C is also used to determine whether the kernel should draw the Ark on the top of the Well of the Soul screen which only occurs if this address hold a positive value. The Ark is drawn at the start of a new game and disappears once the platform reaches the bottom of the pedestal and it is also drawn if I win the game by digging the correct mesa and finding the Ark. It does not draw at all if I lose the game by losing all three lives.
Why does Raiders of the Lost Ark return to normal after restart even after frying the game to the temple treasure room with corrupted graphics and then getting killed and ending the game with the pedestal fully raised and the Ark shown on the top of the screen and pressing the right controller button to restart. Game reset switch will not work after frying the game and I can only restart with the right controller button once the game ends.
Hitting Pin 10 and knocking 9, 8, and 7 on difficulty level A. Happened on Atari 2600 when I was a kid. Can also reproduce in Stella but makes weird noise when it crashes.
Why does the Atari 2600 Bowling sometimes crash into vertical stripes when knocking the bottom of the last four back pins toward the top line creating a domino effect with the difficulty switch set to A?
I went into Stella debugger while Indy was descending and noticed that $9C is still #$00 and then I resumed emulation and when I waited until the Ark disappeared after Indy reaches the bottom of the pedestal I went rechecked $9C and it is now #$80. This is when the game resets again when the switch is held down. The counter is actually in $CF and is also compared against $9E or #$7C whichever comes first. The code that moves Indy down the pedestal starts at $D45B
E.T. doesn't do cold start to start a new game unlike Raiders of the Lost Ark. Both games are programmed by HSW. Can you contact HSW to find out why Raiders of the Lost Ark does a cold start after each game?
Nukey, Why is the same memory location $9C used to check if game is already initialized and also to draw the Ark on the top of the screen when the negative bit is not set?
If I win the game and find the ark the reset switch no longer works because RAM location $9C set to a positive number which is between $00 to $7F. When Indy reaches the bottom of the pedestal at the start of a new game RAM location $9C is set to $80 and the ark disappears. The game uses the negative bit of this RAM location to skip drawing the ark at the top of the screen. Finding the ark causes the game to detect as already initialized and not allow the reset to work.