Mountain King disassembled?

[ttony_at]

Has Mountain King been disassembled?

This site have a few that have been already disassembled:

 

http://www.io.com/~nickb/atari/games.html

 

A lot of the secret kingdom in Mountain King remained loss until about 5 years ago. And I'm wondering if disassembling MK would help in discovering any and all other tricks and easter eggs that might lurk hidden somewhere!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Has Mountain King been disassembled?

Nope, but here you can find more disassemblies if you are interested: The MiniDig

[Mindfield]

IIRC the "secret kingdom" in Mountain King is simply an area you're not supposed to be able to get to but, due to a trick can access. As I recall, this "kingdom" is just areas made up from the location pointers pointing where they shouldn't be -- at code, rather than level data, thus it's not an easter egg to be discovered but rather an unintentional side effect (like frying).

[ttony_at]

But would disasembling it reveal things that haven't been found yet (Yes

or no?)

 

[ttony_at]

Nope, but here you can find more disassemblies if you are interested: The MiniDig  

 

Interesting thanks.

[Mindfield]

If there's anything to be found then yes, I suppose it would, given enough time to disassemble and then decipher the code so you can follow it to see if certain actions lead to certain heretofore undiscovered results. It's a RAM Plus cart, so there was room to hide something if they were so inclined. If there's anything at all I doubt it would be terribly significant though.

[ttony_at]

If there's anything to be found then yes, I suppose it would, given enough time to disassemble and then decipher the code so you can follow it to see if certain actions lead to certain heretofore undiscovered results. It's a RAM Plus cart, so there was room to hide something if they were so inclined. If there's anything at all I doubt it would be terribly significant though.

 

Thanks. The area looks ramdom but it's not. The things that do

occur up there do so because where you move, the passage of time and score and so on. I've played around in that hidden world so many times that I've gotten to know it pretty well and can often predicwhat will happen if I take most actions. It seems the more time passes more and more blue ladders vanish. I don't know if all would eventually disapear leaving only a few or how long I'd have to wait (there are areas where you can increase the Time and Score to keep playing forever).

 

Who knows what the programers were up to.

[DEBRO]

Has Mountain King been disassembled?

Not yet. Are you up for the challenge

[Godzilla]

well if anybody does find more please let me know. i found the secret area myself back as a kid and I thought it was coolest thing ever. :-) So any other hidden stuff in MK would be AWESOME.

[Albert]

Has Mountain King been disassembled?

Not yet. Are you up for the challenge

 

It would be interesting to look at the code to see what is going on when you jump very high up and reach the "hidden" kingdom (or whatever you'd like to call it). It's probably just game code and data, but would be nice to know exactly what's going on, from a curiosity standpoint.

 

..Al

[Bruce Tomlin]

Thanks. The area looks ramdom but it's not. The things that do

occur up there do so because where you move, the passage of time and score and so on. I've played around in that hidden world so many times that I've gotten to know it pretty well and can often predicwhat will happen if I take most actions. It seems the more time passes more and more blue ladders vanish. I don't know if all would eventually disapear leaving only a few or how long I'd have to wait (there are areas where you can increase the Time and Score to keep playing forever).

 

Who knows what the programers were up to.

That's because it's a RAM-Plus cartridge. The RAM locations are at the start of the cartridge address space, and presumably, higher altitudes are at lower addresses. The areas that change do so because they are in RAM.

[ulij20]

Thanks. The area looks ramdom but it's not. The things that do

occur up there do so because where you move, the passage of time and score and so on. I've played around in that hidden world so many times that I've gotten to know it pretty well and can often predicwhat will happen if I take most actions. It seems the more time passes more and more blue ladders vanish. I don't know if all would eventually disapear leaving only a few or how long I'd have to wait (there are areas where you can increase the Time and Score to keep playing forever).

 

Who knows what the programers were up to.

That's because it's a RAM-Plus cartridge. The RAM locations are at the start of the cartridge address space, and presumably, higher altitudes are at lower addresses. The areas that change do so because they are in RAM.

750929[/snapback]

The "secret kingdom" thing was a corruption of the game, I think. Sometimes, when I went up there and wandered around, the game would freeze up.

[Bryan]

Well, remember that the RAM in those carts is modified simply by accessing certain locations (there's no R/W line to the cart, so simply reading certain locations will corrupt the expanded RAM). What probably happens is you move out of the part of RAM that holds the screen data and into the space used to hold game variables, then into the addresses that are used to modify RAM and it crashes.

 

-Bry

[vdub_bobby]

Well, remember that the RAM in those carts is modified simply by accessing certain locations (there's no R/W line to the cart, so simply reading certain locations will corrupt the expanded RAM). What probably happens is you move out of the part of RAM that holds the screen data and into the space used to hold game variables, then into the addresses that are used to modify RAM and it crashes.

 

    -Bry

837003[/snapback]

Just <b>reading</b> the write-locations will modify the RAM?

[vdub_bobby]

Just <b>reading</b> the write-locations will modify the RAM?

837015[/snapback]

Note to self: don't try to use HTML in future posts

[Bryan]

Just reading the write-locations will modify the RAM?

837015[/snapback]

 

Yes. Since there is no R/W line to the cartridge, the scheme used to add RAM to most cartridges is to map the same RAM to 2 areas in memory and treat all accesses to one as reads, and all accesses to the other as writes. Just reading the "writes" area will therefore corrupt it.

 

-Bry