Mountain King for 2600 played in 7800

[ttony_at]

At a flea market, I had a chance to try out for the first time the Atari 7800.

And I was curious as to what would happen when the Mountain King (CBS

Electronics) made for 2600, is played on a 7800.

 

Well, everything looks the same until you get up to the hidden world.

In the hidden world it seems impossible to create ladders like you do in the 2600

to climb higher. Both the paddles and Sega Genesis controllers don't add ladders

anywhere as they do when the game is played on the 2600. And the Atari Video

Touch Pad, Keyboard Controller and Colecovision don't remove ladders.

Why the difference I wonder.

 

Some extra ladders are created when taking up the Flame Spirit with you. But it's

still not possible to climb as far up as in the 2600.

 

What could be the reason for the difference?

[+kisrael]

Hmm, interesting research.

 

I think I was one of the earlier people to start posting about the hiden areas in Mountain King back on r.g.v.c. but I never really followed it up.

 

my guess is that it's a weird view of memory up there, but other people think its more deliberate than that...

[Tempest]

The reason it doesnt work on the 7800 is most likely because of the way the 2600 is emulated on the 7800. The hidden area is really an unfinished easter egg. What happens when you go in there is you start accessing areas of the code that are used by other things (pointers pointing to wrong things), so everything starts looking wacky (sort of like the minus world in SMB or the Mine Storm lvl 13 bug). Special controllers and other devices can manipulate the area because they are sending signals to the 2600 which are causing the code to do different things, however this is all unintentional as things like Genesis controllers didnt exist back when this game was made.

 

Tempest

[ttony_at]

The reason it doesnt work on the 7800 is most likely because of the way the 2600 is emulated on the 7800. The hidden area is really an unfinished easter egg. What happens when you go in there is you start accessing areas of the code that are used by other things (pointers pointing to wrong things), so everything starts looking wacky (sort of like the minus world in SMB or the Mine Storm lvl 13 bug).

So the reason the 7800 doesn't emulate it the same way is because the 7800

cleans up the unfinished code better than the 2600?

Special controllers and other devices can manipulate the area because they

are sending signals to the 2600 which are causing the code to do different things,

however this is all unintentional as things like Genesis controllers didnt exist back

when this game was made. Tempest

But the Genesis controllers didn't need to exit back then because regular Atari

Paddles send the *same* signals to add extra ladders to climb higher as

the Sega Genenis does.

 

869231[/snapback]

[Bruce Tomlin]

It's because the "hidden world" is nothing more a view of the memory address space outside the cartridge. If the bus reads differently in those areas, the ladders will be different. What gets seen there is dependent upon the hardware itself.

[+kisrael]

The reason it doesnt work on the 7800 is most likely because of the way the 2600 is emulated on the 7800.  The hidden area is really an unfinished easter egg.

Have we received confirmation about that? Like from the author?

What do other ports of Mountain King have in terms of hidden areas or secrets?

[Tempest]

The reason it doesnt work on the 7800 is most likely because of the way the 2600 is emulated on the 7800.  The hidden area is really an unfinished easter egg.

Have we received confirmation about that? Like from the author?

What do other ports of Mountain King have in terms of hidden areas or secrets?

871233[/snapback]

 

I thought I read somewhere that at one point Ed admitted that it was an easter egg and he either ran out of room to implement it or ran out of time. I could be mistaken though. AFAIK this egg doesn't exist in other versions.

 

It's because the "hidden world" is nothing more a view of the memory address space outside the cartridge. If the bus reads differently in those areas, the ladders will be different. What gets seen there is dependent upon the hardware itself.

 

Yes this is what I was trying to say.

 

Tempest