Atari 2600 kill screens (comprehensive list)

[Serious]

I've been looking for a comprehensive list of known kill screens for Atari 2600 games, and the closest thing I have found is this old thread.

 

If anyone knows definite info on Atari 2600 games that stop working at a certain score or level, and what causes it to happen, please reply adding what you know.

 

I will edit this message to become a comprehensive list.

 

These are what I know (or specific info contributed below):

 

Demon Attack: finish 84th wave (early run versions only)

Laser Blast: 1,000,000 points

Dodge'em - 1,080 points

 

 

From youtube videos, it looks like H.E.R.O., Pitfall, and Keystone Kapers have kill screens, but I don't know exactly what triggers it.

[shadow460]

Most Activision titles stop at at a million points. Pitfall II has a sort of ending which I won't spoil. Escape From the MindMaster always locks up at the score screen whether you finish the game or not, but this is by design. Ditto for Phaser Patrol.

 

I can't think of any right offhand that have actual kill screens instead of a very brief ending... wait a minute... Adventure will lock up if you put the bridge one room south of the yellow or two rooms south of the white castle and cross over the very middle of the wall. One will just jam you in a wall somewhere and the other will get you stuck in the small area between the castle towers. It's also possible to get jammed in a wall if the bridge is carried off or moved while you're using it.

[Nukey Shay]

A lot of them have game-ending glitches (or features, such as the case for Activision titles' score thresholds). Some by design (like revealing the author's initials in Yars' Revenge), others due to programming oversight (letting the attract mode timer advance or scoring too many lives in Berzerk).

 

Check out Scott's pages at DP for more info.

 

BTW Adventure doesn't really have a killscreen, however, since you can "reincarnate" any time you choose and continue with the same round. Locking a key in it's own castle would be a better example of making an unwinnable game...but even that does not fit the topic (everything is still going on even though you can't complete the goal).

 

Demon Attack's bug (oversight) was fixed on subsequent production runs.

[Goochman]

Dodg'em - 1080 points max

[Serious]

Cool. Thanks everyone for the info so far.

 

I'm mostly interested in kill screens reached by exceeding a maximum score or level, or playing "too long", where the game stops working correctly or freezes (not a deliberate end screen). Basically, breaking the game by advancing too far (beyond what was allowed for by the programming).

 

If anyone contributes exact information on what causes the kill screen to occur (like the exact amount of idle time in Berzerk), I will add it to the list above.

[Goochman]

So I cant remember the exact level but there is a version of Demon Attack that resets at like level 274 or something like that - later cartridges removed the restriction

 

The Twin Galaxies forums had a detailed writeup on the Berzerk timeout, but unfort those have been removed in the re-design.

 

There is another game that will reset itself if not played - Does Donkey Kong do that?

[timdu]

FYI - Scott's pages are now being hosted on the 2600 Connection web site. They are no longer being updated on the DP site.

 

Check them out @

 

http://www.2600connection.com/eastereggs/eastereggs.html

 

 

And one game that also has a kill screen is Tunnel Runner.

 

Check out:

 

http://www.2600connection.com/eastereggs/26tunnelrunner.html

 

thanks,

 

Tim

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out Scott's pages at DP for more info.

 

 

[Supergun]

The most well known to me personally by far is the Dodge 'em 1080 maximum score limitation. I discovered this one back when I was a kid completely on my own. I loved the game so much that I continued to learn the computer car behavior and memorized the screen patterns. But even after achieving "perfection", (never crashing), I just couldn't believe how the computer would simply take away your reserve cars, slowly but surely, until they were all gone, and then in essence, take away your last one at 1080. To this day I still know the patterns by memory and I always play a game or two when I am playing 2600.

 

I know the scoring system in Decathlon "crashes" in the Pole Vault event, (well and others as well), and becomes unable to display the actual points in numbers that you score and displays gibberish instead.

 

Also if you get greedy and go for the "unlimited coins" in the treasure room of Montezuma's Revenge, you in essence get "cursed" and are stuck in that room and can never leave. (You can now get a perfect 999 score after a while, but you can never leave so your game is over and the game is kind of "crashed" I guess.

 

I will think it over and see if any others come to mind. I do seem to recall one other off hand, but I cannot remember right now.

[Tempest]

Blackjack has a max score ( 1000 maybe?) then it will end.

[Dauber]

I know the scoring system in Decathlon "crashes" in the Pole Vault event, (well and others as well), and becomes unable to display the actual points in numbers that you score and displays gibberish instead.

 

Back in the day, I found that it actually goes BEYOND that. I didn't have the game, but I borrowed it from the neighbors and just played the hell out of the game. I distinctly remember the manual said that if you want to increase your height when letting go of the pole, you needed to do the back-and-forth thing with the joystick (as if you were running), but I found that didn't work at all..but what DID work was the longer you held down the fire button, the higher you'd fly.

 

And I found that once you cleared a certain height, there was a display bug in which the bar was only as high as the mat, and it would actually grow to whatever height you were at. And if you let go of the pole at just the right time, you could still clear the continuously rising bar....and after doing that over and over for a while, suddenly the game was no longer playable, and the player would float backwards across the screen, wrap around, pause, and repeat ad infinitum. I consider that a kill screen!

 

I told the aforementioned neighbor about that, and he took a picture of it and sent it to Activision to see if they could tell him anything about it. I think it went to the form letter department and he got a patch or something, but that's it...

Edited May 7, 2013 by Dauber

[Nukey Shay]

Thanks for the link. I did notice something incorrect for Adventure, tho...

 

Put the magnet on top of the gold castle, bring the chalice to that screen and drop it, and then leave before it gets pulled across the gate. Wait a few seconds and then return. The game won't end, even though the chalice is now inside the castle! You have to either enter it, or press RESET

 

Objects cannot pass through a castle's entrance unless they are onscreen (hardware collision-detection is used here). Objects are sent into a castle though that entrance only when touching it's corresponding gate onscreen (and it is open). This is true of all castles.

 

-however-

 

There is a (intentional?) loophole in game #1. Rooms are shuffled around to make the map smaller. The upper room of the catacombs "dungeon" is used as the black castle interior. So dragons wandering around can end up inside the castle just from following room links...whether it is locked or not, and whether they are onscreen or not.

 

I'm not sure if this was intended, because the programmer stressed that he wanted all paths to be retracable. An object can also leave the black castle the same way.

 

Oh...and the computer picking double-nines in Backgammon is not a bug. This is an intentionally-programmed easter egg (it even uses it's own gfx image).

Edited May 7, 2013 by Nukey Shay

[Nukey Shay]

the exact amount of idle time in Berzerk

 

There is no exact amount, actually. Two timers and joystick status are at work here. The "frame counter" (ram $84) increases 60 times per second (50 for PAL), rolling over from 255 back to zero. If the stick is not being pressed on the specific frame when this rollover occurs, the "attract mode timer" (ram $87) is increased. If THAT timer rolls over from 255 to zero, the game is ended by jumping back to game select.Note that apart from this rollover, the attract mode timer is ONLY reset to zero on powerup. So if you were allowing the attract mode timer to increase on a previous game, the amount accumulated is carried over to the new game!So if you want to maximize the idle time, it's suggested to begin a new game directly after powerup (it's the only time you KNOW that the timer is zero), and always move the stick during a game so it isn't given the opportunity to increase when the frame counter rolls.

[+thegoldenband]

Chuck Norris Superkicks ends unceremoniously when you defeat the last of the invisible enemies at the end. It sure looks like it was meant to have an ending, but instead you're just stuck until time runs out.

[Tempest]

Chuck Norris Superkicks ends unceremoniously when you defeat the last of the invisible enemies at the end. It sure looks like it was meant to have an ending, but instead you're just stuck until time runs out.

I've always wondered about that. Can someone look into the code and see if there's any sort of ending? Unless they thought the game was so impossible that they didn't have to put an ending it, you'd think that it would at least play a little jingle or something.

[Goochman]

There is no exact amount, actually. Two timers and joystick status are at work here. The "frame counter" (ram $84) increases 60 times per second (50 for PAL), rolling over from 255 back to zero. If the stick is not being pressed on the specific frame when this rollover occurs, the "attract mode timer" (ram $87) is increased. If THAT timer rolls over from 255 to zero, the game is ended by jumping back to game select.Note that apart from this rollover, the attract mode timer is ONLY reset to zero on powerup. So if you were allowing the attract mode timer to increase on a previous game, the amount accumulated is carried over to the new game!So if you want to maximize the idle time, it's suggested to begin a new game directly after powerup (it's the only time you KNOW that the timer is zero), and always move the stick during a game so it isn't given the opportunity to increase when the frame counter rolls.

 

I deferred to the non technical response of not moving the joystick as idle time - I cant believe no one in QA didnt run into this issue since if you just leave it on a bit the game will go to attract mode.

[Nukey Shay]

Who can say? Code is often changed before and during the prototype stage. A little tweak someplace could have broken a working routine. It only takes 2 bytes to fix (or none, actually, since the AND #$0F instruction below the SWCHA read is superfluous). Just store the LSR'ed joystick value to the attract timer when it IS moved. Boom, you get another 17 minutes of idle time.

 

Or, it's more-likely that the people playtesting the game didn't wait around (and maybe didn't even notice the glitch if it had occurred).

[JadeETC]

While Beany Bopper's 100,000 point surprise isn't really a kill screen, the game does flip out. I haven't made it much farther then that score.

[WolfAmongWolves]

Dolphin has an interesting kill screen. It is one of the few Activision titles that offered multiple patches, one of them tied to the kill screen. For reaching 80,000 points you got the "Friends of Dolphins" patch. Once you reach 300,000 points, the game stops and the score is replaced with the word "Amazing". That got you the "Secret Society of Dolphins" patch.

[davyK]

Kind of an obvious one - but the original Breakout has a two wall limit - you can keep the ball in play but no more bricks will appear.

[Nukey Shay]

The port shares that aspect with the arcade original...replacing the wall only when a specific point total has been reached (432 here tho). However, the arcade's glitch where you can trick one player's replacement wall to appear for the other player (giving the latter an additional wall to demolish) does not work on the home game.

[Tempest]

Anyone look into Chuck Norris and see if there's an ending of some sort hiding in the code? That one always seemed kind of odd to me.

[+thegoldenband]

Anyone look into Chuck Norris and see if there's an ending of some sort hiding in the code? That one always seemed kind of odd to me.

 

Seconded! I'd love to know definitively if there's even a hint of unused code for an ending.

[JadeETC]

Anyone look into Chuck Norris and see if there's an ending of some sort hiding in the code? That one always seemed kind of odd to me.

I didn't look into the code, but even the manual states there is no "ending".

[Dragon Princess Yushira]

1 game I know from experience is Assault and there is another game Kaboom that has a kill screen after 999999 points I believe.

 

Here's me doing Assault.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpNUmONtChs

[rjchamp3]

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Endless-Snow-2600/682127795133259 This game HAS A KS