Scott Stilphen

http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/26frontline.htm

David Britten discovered that if you do the "balloon" trick, and press FIRE just as you get shot, the level will end (as if you destroyed the fort)! Repeatedly doing this will roll the score in an hour (at 1 million).

Who has the one that was shown in the "Atari Quest" article?

http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/26superman.htm

At long last.....

Looks good so far! I noticed something (with Z26) - pushing down makes the screen shake. Don't know if this is an issue with the emu or not.

{bump} Chris just redesigned the circuit, which now appears above.

Never tried to do it more than once in the same game, but I don't see why you couldn't. I did it right at the start of the game, when the ghosts are all bunched up together - lured them down to the bottom entrance and went it. Tod Frye mentioned that the bug is a result of the way he wrote the random number generator.

If all 4 ghosts enter the tunnel, they won't be able to come out!

Just checked the manuals for these two. Both features are mentioned, but I think that having to reset Mouse Trap to get the maze back is a bug.

Didn't know about Mouse Trap and Journey Escape - cool! Looks like the programmer for JE ripped off Rob Fulop's starfield trick Some other games use the TV type switch as a pause switch. A few of these don't mention this feature in the manual.

What, no Van Halen??

Delf Meek noted that the glitch Tod Frye spoke of (in Russ' 'Slap-Dash') is true. I just managed to reproduce it (and videotape it). Q: Has anyone ever seen 2 (or more) ghosts enter the tunnel from both ends? Just wondering if it's possible...

The Tank Plus label is dated 1976?!?

It was designed to improve the picture quality when used with a b&w TV (yes, it did look better!). The early games incorporated this feature (if it's set to b&w on a color tv, the picture will turn b&w), but by the early 80s, enough people owned color tv's that games didn't use it anymore (the switch has no effect), or a few programmers used it for other purposes, as you mentioned. As for what exactly the hardware does when in b&w mode, I don't know. I think this was briefy mentioned on one of the Stella tapes.

I don't think I ever read the manual's description until now. Apparently the drug use wasn't limited to the programmers... "The object of the game is to keep Pac-Man happy and healthy in his home of Mazeland. Pac-Man starts the game with four lives (turns). The longer he survives, the more points you score. You score a point for every video wafer that Pac-Man eats. You also score points when Pac-Man eats power pills, vitamins, and ghosts. Everytime Pac-Man eats all of the video wafers on the maze, he earns an extra life and a new maze full of video wafers." Video wafers....power pills....vitamins.. WTF??

She played footage of the game during her presentation speech at this year's CGE. Where were you, Tempest?

Is that even a joystick he's holding? Looks like a paddle. Yeah, this whole scenario seems set up.. Forget about being unhappy when he plays it - just wait until he actually *sees* and *hears* it. Better yet, put up pictures of both the VCS version and the arcade version. Then tell him which one he's stuck with. I believe this picture is the defining moment just before we all realized exactly what we were stuck with....

I did read it. I don't understand what you mean, though. All the auto-fire circuits I've seen pulse 1 closure (such as FIRE+GROUND) whereas the circuit I was looking for pulses between 2 closures (in this case, LEFT+GROUND and RIGHT+GROUND). If you can, post a diagram of an auto-fire circuit used in this manner.

An auto-fire circuit wouldn't work, since it only pulses 1 line. Chris Wilkson designed this circuit, which is what I was looking for:

The map and solution are on the 2600 Connection site, at: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Lair/...9260/sbsol.html

The games will boot up in MESS (once you delete the header), but you can't select a level, and you can't get past that screen.

I'll have pics of them on my Easter egg site in a few days.

You're right - never noticed that before! I guess converting all those colors for the PAL version was too time-consuming.

Was Merlin's Walls (or *any* Ebivsion) games released as bins yet??