audiemurphy Posted March 20, 2006 Share Posted March 20, 2006 I turned on Food Fight, and the atari screen showed, but then it just said "The Alchemist". anyone have any explainations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 20, 2006 Share Posted March 20, 2006 Really? Hmm... Were you using an emulator or a real 7800? You could have somehow triggered an easter egg. The Alchemist could be a code name of one of the programmers. Beyond that I have no idea what could have happened. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiemurphy Posted March 20, 2006 Author Share Posted March 20, 2006 Well, It was on a 7800 system. It was written in the same font as the Food Fight logo was in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 20, 2006 Share Posted March 20, 2006 Definetly sounds like an Easter Egg. Do you recall if you did anything different before starting the game? Have you been able to reproduce it? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiemurphy Posted March 21, 2006 Author Share Posted March 21, 2006 Definetly sounds like an Easter Egg. Do you recall if you did anything different before starting the game? Have you been able to reproduce it? Tempest No, I was just dragging out my 7800 to play. It had been probably 6 months since I had played last. I put the game in, and it glitched up 2-3 times, and then the alchemist showed up. I tried again and again, but no luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted March 26, 2006 Share Posted March 26, 2006 Well, It was on a 7800 system. It was written in the same font as the Food Fight logo was in. Was it the same font as the big foodfight logo, or did it look more like the text that makes up the copyright notice and option selection? Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted March 26, 2006 Share Posted March 26, 2006 (edited) Ok, I can't resist a mystery and since I am in the process of writing a 7800 graphics viewer I decided to tackle this one. I poked around in ROM with my graphics viewer and found the character graphics (which are not a full set a characters) and from that I managed to decode how the text in the game is stored. This lead me to this piece of text in the ROM: BYTHE "ALCHEMIST0F FUN"KEITHSAWYER Note that this is not stored in ASCII in the ROM so it won't show up when viewing the ROM. A quick Google of Keith Sawyer turned up that he worked at GCC and was the lead designer on Food Fight. So now the question is, was what the original poster saw just a glitch, or is there really some way to make this appear in the game. I will have to poke through the code of the game a bit more to figure out if it is truely an easter egg. Dan Edited March 26, 2006 by DanBoris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schmutzpuppe Posted March 26, 2006 Share Posted March 26, 2006 Ok, I can't resist a mystery and since I am in the process of writing a 7800 graphics viewer I decided to tackle this one. I poked around in ROM with my graphics viewer and found the character graphics (which are not a full set a characters) and from that I managed to decode how the text in the game is stored. This lead me to this piece of text in the ROM: BYTHE "ALCHEMIST0F FUN"KEITHSAWYER Note that this is not stored in ASCII in the ROM so it won't show up when viewing the ROM. A quick Google of Keith Sawyer turned up that he worked at GCC and was the lead designer on Food Fight. So now the question is, was what the original poster saw just a glitch, or is there really some way to make this appear in the game. I will have to poke through the code of the game a bit more to figure out if it is truely an easter egg. Dan Yes, it's stored in a weird order: GCAEVNMILP... I am looking forward what you'll find out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 I am in the process of writing a 7800 graphics viewer I had done something like this awhile ago, actually. I would recommend looking at "Joust" and "Asteroids". Still can't figure out how to trigger these. http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/78joust.htm http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/78asteroids.htm I think I tipped DP off about the graphics being there, but I don't believe that the pix are mine. Food Fight, however, is not listed here: http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/7800.htm Perhaps we should add it? Regards, -John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 I talked to Pete Gaston, and he seemed to indicate that Atari made him take out the easter egg for Joust before the game was released. Perhaps he left the code in, but took out the trigger? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 So now the question is, was what the original poster saw just a glitch, or is there really some way to make this appear in the game. I will have to poke through the code of the game a bit more to figure out if it is truely an easter egg. Dan I took a look through the code and don't see any obvious place where the ROM locations that contain the message could be accessed. It's possible that the program tried to hide the code that displays the message, but I am not sure why he would bother since anyone reviewing the code would spot the message very easily. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbanes Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 I took a look through the code and don't see any obvious place where the ROM locations that contain the message could be accessed. It's possible that the program tried to hide the code that displays the message, but I am not sure why he would bother since anyone reviewing the code would spot the message very easily. Is it possible that it's a hidden code path? Astrosmash, as an example, was originally going to be an Asteroids clone. However, the programmer had been working on a game he thought was a lot more fun, so he hid it in the code. Mattel executives eventually got cold feet about taking on Atari, and thus the hidden game became the primary, and the primary became the hidden game. The jump instruction at the beginning of the cart is intended to route around the Asteroids code in all cases. However, there have been reports that the instruction sometimes fails during the unstable period during power-on. The result is that the Asteroids clone is occasionally accessable, but only by accident. Given the 101 ways it seems possible to glitch out the 7800, might this only execute by pure accident? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 I took a look through the code and don't see any obvious place where the ROM locations that contain the message could be accessed. It's possible that the program tried to hide the code that displays the message, but I am not sure why he would bother since anyone reviewing the code would spot the message very easily. I think I spoke to soon! I looked at the code again with a fresh head, turns out I was looking for the wrong thing. I am pretty sure I found a piece of code that would display the message on the screen. For anyone who is interested, the code it at location $BD03 in the cartridge. Tracing back I find that the program gets to BB78 when you press the trigger on the title screen. From there if a bunch of conditions are met, it eventually ends up at BD03 to display the message. It will take some doing to figure out what all those conditions are. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted March 28, 2006 Share Posted March 28, 2006 We are definitely on the trail of an Easter Egg here. By manually manipulating some memory locations as I traced through the code I was able to trigger the message. Still not sure what game conditions trigger it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bakasama Posted March 28, 2006 Share Posted March 28, 2006 I sense another 7800 hack in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted April 28, 2006 Share Posted April 28, 2006 I sense another 7800 hack in the future. Mega cool!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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