Was the Mountain King secret level intentional?

[kisrael]

My opinion is that the only thing that was "duplicated" is the effort (or lack of effort) to not bother fixing a bug.

 

To misquote Bob Ross

"There are no minus-world bugs, only happy accidents"

[Ranthulfr]

Even with the considerable randomness and unpredictability there could be some more interesting stuff lurking up there. This site has describes a few curiousities (involving alternate controllers as mentioned above):

http://www.angelfire.com/mt/mountkingatari2600/

 

Ya know, I recently retired my old cx-40 stick because it was no longer reliable in the left direction... Now I'm wondering if it's not the same MountainKing-itis that others have had trouble with. If the game can devour a TAC-2 stick then I'm sure a cx-40 is just a light snack.

[shadow460]

Ya know, I recently retired my old cx-40 stick because it was no longer reliable in the left direction... Now I'm wondering if it's not the same MountainKing-itis that others have had trouble with. If the game can devour a TAC-2 stick then I'm sure a cx-40 is just a light snack.

 

[ttony_at]

Even with the considerable randomness and unpredictability there could be some more interesting stuff lurking up there. This site has describes a few curiousities (involving alternate controllers as mentioned above):

http://www.angelfire.com/mt/mountkingatari2600/

 

 

Hi, I'm the person who wrote the instructions on this website. Man, my brother must have spent months exploring the hidden world

and then drew maps of it! It was so fascinating discovering stuff in there... it wouldn't surprise me if there is more to be found.

And the extra controllers that actually help you go higher by adding ladders.

 

I've reviewed the site around earlier this year and we're pretty sure we've included written everything we found.

 

Glad to see people are still trying to find out about the hidden levels in this game but are we getting closer to a

logical answer as to why it exists? And perhaps more interestingly, what else is there waiting to be discovered??

 

Tony

Vancouver B.C.

Edited September 13, 2011 by ttony_at

[Mxyzptlk]

Even with the considerable randomness and unpredictability there could be some more interesting stuff lurking up there. This site has describes a few curiousities (involving alternate controllers as mentioned above):

http://www.angelfire.com/mt/mountkingatari2600/

 

 

Hi, I'm the person who wrote the instructions on this website. Man, my brother must have spent months exploring the hidden world

and then drew maps of it! It was so fascinating discovering stuff in there... it wouldn't surprise me if there is more to be found.

And the extra controllers that actually help you go higher by adding ladders.

 

I've reviewed the site around earlier this year and we're pretty sure we've included written everything we found.

 

Glad to see people are still trying to find out about the hidden levels in this game but are we getting closer to a

logical answer as to why it exists? And perhaps more interestingly, what else is there waiting to be discovered??

 

Tony

Vancouver B.C.

Thank you.

[ttony_at]

Does anyone remember if the 5200 or other versions have secret areas?

 

Yes, I think most of the other versions do have secret areas (that are only a secret until we know).

 

For example in the Mountain King Atari 8-bit version it's at the bottom.

 

The player gets stuck at the end. But I wonder if it's possible to continue climbing down

some other way and how far.

Edited September 13, 2011 by ttony_at

[Zap!]

After playing Mountain King for the first time seriously in over 25 years (A8 version), I just have to give a huge thumbs up to this old but very informative thread!

[zzip]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but is the secret level in Mountain King the result of some accidental programming glitch, or was it put in there intentionally by the programmer? I remember the first time I discovered it purely by chance and I thought it was the coolest thing ever!

 

I believe it's unintentional. It seems too glitchy to be intentional.

 

As a programmer, what I think happened is the "double jump" thing is either a bug, or was used in debugging to jump further quickly. But when you jump so high, you've jumped off the map, and the platforms and ladders are a result of program code, counters, and the like being interpreted as ladders and platforms.

[Tempest]

 

I believe it's unintentional. It seems too glitchy to be intentional.

 

As a programmer, what I think happened is the "double jump" thing is either a bug, or was used in debugging to jump further quickly. But when you jump so high, you've jumped off the map, and the platforms and ladders are a result of program code, counters, and the like being interpreted as ladders and platforms.

 

I agree. If the secret area was intentional then it wouldn't be so buggy and crash. I think it's just a glitch with the way the levels are stored and constructed compounded by accessing random code or memory. This sort of thing has been shown to happen in other games, so it's not unique.

[moycon]

It is indeed unintentional the confirmation being contained earlier in this very thread!!

Great (if old) info here. I loved Mountain King as a kid. A truly unique experience on the Atari 2600.

[Bryan]

It's unusual for a game to allow you to exit the map like this. The 800 version clearly contains a trap door to let you get to Bob Matson's name. Bob must have known that once you walk off his name you end up in a random mess made up of other code or data in RAM. Since the programmer credit is intentional on the 800, it's an intentional feature even if the level has no design (it's kinda like the field in Yar's Revenge which is just the ROM drawn down the screen). A few bytes of code would have stopped you from falling that far.

 

So, it would be quite a coincidence if the 2600 version accidentally had a similar feature- a way to exit the level data and explore a garbage level rendered from other parts of the memory map. Ed Salvo claims he put it there which means unless he's just taking credit for a feature-bug, he implemented the super jump instead of a trap door. Perhaps Ed originally planned for a trap door, but discovered he had a bug in the jumping code that could accomplish the same thing. Who knows?

 

So, I tend to think the feature was understood by the programmers from the beginning, especially if Ed had access to Bob's source code and knew about the Easter Egg.

[Zap!]

It's unusual for a game to allow you to exit the map like this. The 800 version clearly contains a trap door to let you get to Bob Matson's name. Bob must have known that once you walk off his name you end up in a random mess made up of other code or data in RAM. Since the programmer credit is intentional on the 800, it's an intentional feature even if the level has no design (it's kinda like the field in Yar's Revenge which is just the ROM drawn down the screen). A few bytes of code would have stopped you from falling that far.

 

So, it would be quite a coincidence if the 2600 version accidentally had a similar feature- a way to exit the level data and explore a garbage level rendered from other parts of the memory map. Ed Salvo claims he put it there which means unless he's just taking credit for a feature-bug, he implemented the super jump instead of a trap door. Perhaps Ed originally planned for a trap door, but discovered he had a bug in the jumping code that could accomplish the same thing. Who knows?

 

So, I tend to think the feature was understood by the programmers from the beginning, especially if Ed had access to Bob's source code and knew about the Easter Egg.

 

That's the best explanation I've ever read on this. Great post!