Galaga - River Raid hack

[Nostalgic]

Has anyone else out there encountered "Galaga" for the 2600? I downloaded a ROM file years ago and it turned out to be a hack of River Raid. There's some particularly nasty levels in there - some passages have ground at the end of them, so you have to remember not to go down them or else you crash!

 

Was this ever produced as an actual (bootleg) cartridge?

 

For those who know the internals of River Raid: how do you think this hack was accomplished? Tweak the pseudo-random level generator? Change what gets generated to include things like dead ends?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

For those who know the internals of River Raid: how do you think this hack was accomplished?  Tweak the pseudo-random level generator?  Change what gets generated to include things like dead ends?

The Galaga hack is dead simple! (like most hacks)

 

They used the PAL version and only changed the graphics of parts of the river banks, the copyright message and adjusted the timing (by changing one single byte).

 

The changes you supposed would have required a deeper understanding of the code, which most hackers (pirates) didn't have.