Does Kool-Aid Man Have An Ending?

[Mark Kennedy]

6 hours ago, Rev said:

The ending that should of been. 

There was a commercial that had a brief clip of the game, KAM catching some FFFs.  Doubt that it still exists anywhere.

[Mark Kennedy]

On 3/10/2022 at 7:35 AM, Zendocon said:

To answer the original question, I just confirmed the game does not go any higher than level 13 (light green timer, set to 9:59).  If you complete both sub-levels with the level set to 13 or higher, you start again at level 13.

 

One thing I never noticed before is at the higher levels, the screen does not pan until the kids are further away from the middle of the screen, limiting your "view-ahead distance".  That in addition to the fact you can't avoid the Thirsties!

 

I made a few ROM pokes to allow the game to start at some level in the range 11-14.  "Level 14" is not an actual difficulty level.  It behaves like the kiddie difficulty level, except the Thirsties do not appear at all until Kool-Aid Man appears!  It's not unlike the ROM poke I did for AD&D Cloudy Mountain to allow for Trainer difficulty.

 

In case you're wondering, at "Level 15" the screen does not pan at all, and the kids can't move off the screen, so you're stuck.  The timer is invisible (black on black).  Maybe there are other playable difficulties past this range, like "Level 99" in Ladybug.  I'll see what I can dig up before I post the poke on my website.

Ah, there's a technical term for the "Level 15" condition:  a bug!  I don't recall ever testing that high, so it's not that surprising that it failed.  I don't remember doing anything with the scrolling at the higher levels, but it might have been my way of ensuring that no one got past that level.  I recall the arcade Burger Time reached a point where you couldn't make it to the first turn before being caught, essentially ending the game.

[Mark Kennedy]

On 3/10/2022 at 9:33 AM, Zendocon said:

I played around with the scoring as well.  It's stored as five 3-digit groups in the addresses $20b..$20f.  Poking the value $3e7 to $20f gives you 999 trillion points.

 

Here is a screenshot with a couple screen artifacts.  At "Level 14" the timer is loused up, because the three digits are initialized to values outside the lookup table.  But the "shingles" on the far right are what I was referring to earlier.  As a kid, I discovered this by catching the last of the Thirsties as far to the right as I could go.  The screen pans a little to the right at this point to display the score (probably clears address $30, the horizontal scroll variable), which made this appear.

The clock problem makes sense.  The shingle problem I don't recall, and I'm surprised QA didn't catch it (they were very good). If it's somehow related to level 14 then it would be understandable.

[Mark Kennedy]

4 hours ago, Zendocon said:

Here's an idea for a sequel.  Who needs Jonestown references?

Kool Aid Man Game II:  Revenge of the Thirsties!  This time they do more than immobilize!  

 

Also, as twisted a sense of humor as I and others have, I don't recall Jonestown jokes.  Not saying they weren't made, just that I have no memory of them.