The weirdest thing just happened...

[davidbrit2]

So I'm playing Circus Atari, trying to roll the score (at 10,000 if my guess is correct.) I'm playing game 1, and I'm at 9595. I'm on my third life, with no extra life in reserve (yet.) Suddenly, the seesaw turns green, moves all the way to the left, and the clown falls to his death. The numbers on screen also change to the same green color. The life counter advances to 4, the score stays the same, and the player number remains at 1. Neither of the paddles responds. And all of the balloons are still moving. Weird... I've had games glitch up from dirty contacts, but never so precisely.

[King Atari]

Wow, that is weird. I haven't had that good of a score, but I've never heard something like that happening. Maybe you've got a buggy version? I have no idea.

[liquid_sky]

i just think your atari is pissed at you and trying to exact revenge

[Nukey Shay]

Maybe just a power spike or something like that. Is it a pirate cart? TG has a plethora of scores above 9999 in it's record books, so I doubt that it's related to the rollover. What was your game selection/difficulty mode?

[davidbrit2]

I think it must have been a glitch, because I just finished rolling the score with no problem. This was on game 1, and I'm using the actual Atari release with picture label.

 

Of course, this isn't even half as weird as this one time I was playing Super Mario Bros...

 

I was on world 4-2, and managed to fall in one of those first pits at the beginning of the level. Suddenly, the screen mirrored horizontally, there was a brief pause, and I ended up at world 0, which is an underwater version of 4-4 without enemies. I was fairly young at the time, so that was more than enough to blow my mind. :-)

[MegaManFan]

I think it must have been a glitch, because I just finished rolling the score with no problem. This was on game 1, and I'm using the actual Atari release with picture label.

 

Of course, this isn't even half as weird as this one time I was playing Super Mario Bros...

 

I was on world 4-2, and managed to fall in one of those first pits at the beginning of the level. Suddenly, the screen mirrored horizontally, there was a brief pause, and I ended up at world 0, which is an underwater version of 4-4 without enemies. I was fairly young at the time, so that was more than enough to blow my mind. :-)

 

Early platform games have "debug" rooms that were used for that "don't know what you did but here's where you'll go" situation when errors occured. I think that's how the "-1" world was discovered (which sounds similar to what you just described). I also managed to generate a similar room by accident on Mega Man 1 when I got a little too happy with the "start button" cheat. The room scrolled over and I got dropped into a room with some messed up graphics that I couldn't leave from.

[davidbrit2]

Yeah, older games can easily fall victim to a horribly out of bounds pointer value. That also explains the so called "secret worlds" in Metroid. Still, for the average kid, sitting around with a Game Genie and making hundreds and hundreds of codes to see these unintended areas is immensely entertaining.

[Nukey Shay]

Much more common to do in consoles newer than the 2600...due to the large amount of mapped areas in the carts.

[Atari Joe]

i lke to think that i am a circuis atari professional because it is my favorite atari game for the 2600 and i play it all the time since the 70s. i had something like that happen once a long time ago and the cartridge was dirty but it just started to fry up in the 2600 this was a 4 swich vader. i almost pissed my panties! - joe