HES Challenge + "hidden" Surfers Paradise, what the heck is this?

[Urchlay]

Going through a pile of loose carts I found at a store a while back, I just found something that might be kind of odd.

 

It's a PAL HES Challenge cart, which looks just like the cart scan in the AA database: http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html...areLabelID=1732

 

It has the text "IMPORTANT: The right A-B difficulty switch must be in the B position", so I fired it up that way.

 

It's definitely PAL: it rolls on my modern NTSC TV, but is playable on my 1976 NTSC antique, which can play most but not all PAL ROMs with some manual V-hold tweaking (though the time at the top of the screen and the lives at the bottom are cut off). So I thought, "Maybe right difficulty A puts the game in NTSC mode", and I tried it...

 

Instead, it plays a completely different game (which turns out to be "Surfer's Paradise", also PAL).

 

A few minutes of googling later, I found this "2-pack Challenge and Surfing special" listed at atarimania: http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...VERSION_ID=7942. However, it's NOT the same thing: the "2-pack" ROM has a menu that lets you pick which game to play, with the joystick. My cart doesn't have a menu, it just uses the right diff switch to pick which game to play.

 

The atarimania entry for HES Challenge isn't particularly enlightening, and the AtariAge entry says almost nothing.

Atarimania: http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...VERSION_ID=7837

AtariAge: http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html...areLabelID=1732 (my cart looks exactly like the cart scan)

 

I searched the forums here, but couldn't find anything relevant (which may mean I'm doing it wrong, so I apologise if this has already been discussed in great detail years ago).

 

So, questions:

 

1. Do all HES Challenge carts also have Surfer's Paradise (anyone else who has this cart, try it with right difficulty A)?

 

2. Did the box and/or manual (which I don't have and have never seen) mention Surfer's Paradise?

 

3, Have I found something really weird and rare, or does everyone already have one of these?

 

4. Did my cart really come from Australia?

 

5. If so, what the heck was an Australian PAL game doing in a store in Atlanta, GA, USA? (This one will likely never be answered, unless the previous owner is reading this)

 

Incidentally... the colors for PAL HES Challenge on my NTSC TV are the same as the NTSC Zellers Challenge. Presumably this means Zellers didn't change the colors when they converted the game to NTSC. Actually, the "wrong" colors look better to me than the colors I get playing the PAL ROM in PAL mode, in Stella.

[rheffera]

I dont know about your challenge, but HES is Defo australian, i have several that are the same design label. i also picked up a U.S games Commando raid NTSC game here in australia. So how did that get here?

Possibly some australian came over to usa and brang their 2600 system with em and sold it. or something like that. If you think thats unlikely, then how did i get my NTSC U.S games commandor raid, yet im in australia? and no, i didnt get it off ebay.

 

My other HES carts say the same thing about difficulty switch, ill try changing it and see what happens.

Edited September 20, 2006 by rheffera

[Rom Hunter]

I already knew about the hidden Surfer's Paradise, but what I would like to know is: do all the Challenge carts have a hidden Surfer's Paradise?

 

Edited September 20, 2006 by Rom Hunter

[BigFairy321]

lol..

 

Devo may know, as i dont have the cart.

[Rom Hunter]

I own a 8K ROM that (I think) contains both Challenge and Surfer's Paradise:

 

2_Pak_Special_Black___Challenge__Surfing__1990___HES___771_333___PAL___a2_.bin

 

Maybe someone can have a look at it.

 

[Urchlay]

I own a 8K ROM that (I think) contains both Challenge and Surfer's Paradise:

 

This is almost certainly a dump of my Challenge cart. It behaves the same way when I play it on hardware (with a Cuttle Cart 2): it plays Challenge or Surfer's Paradise depending on the right difficulty switch.

 

Stella IDs it as "Challenge (Funvision) (PAL) [a1]", not HES, but probably the two are identical.

 

Just for laughs, I cut your 8K image into two 4K chunks... the first chunk, by itself, plays Surfer's Paradise on hardware and gives a black screen in Stella (which doesn't ID it as anything). The second 4K chunk plays Challenge on hardware and Stella, but Stella doesn't ID it as anything (and Stella defaults to NTSC, so the game looks funny).

 

The two 4K chunks are different from the standalone 4K Challenge and Surfer's Paradise ROMs I have (to be expected: they contain bankswitching code, where the standalone games don't).

 

I may try to dump my HES Challenge cart, if I can build a dumper (Glenn's serial port dumper doesn't look too difficult to make).

[Rom Hunter]

Interesting.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

I will rename this ROM immediately.

 

[Urchlay]

Possibly some australian came over to usa and brang their 2600 system with em and sold it. or something like that. If you think thats unlikely, then how did i get my NTSC U.S games commandor raid, yet im in australia? and no, i didnt get it off ebay.

 

Yah, that's probably what happened. I just wish I knew the story (but I likely never will).

 

My other HES carts say the same thing about difficulty switch, ill try changing it and see what happens.

 

Did anything come of that?

 

I already knew about the hidden Surfer's Paradise, but what I would like to know is: do all the Challenge carts have a hidden Surfer's Paradise?

 

I'd like to know this, too...

[dark-aleph]

I just tried my HES Challenge cart - and yes, it too has Surfer's Paradise on it! Hooray for finding out you've got a game you thought you didn't have! I doubt I'd have stumbled onto this myself, so thanks for the post.

 

I already knew about the hidden Surfer's Paradise, but what I would like to know is: do all the Challenge carts have a hidden Surfer's Paradise?

 

 

So far they all seem to, but you can't prove this theory without testing every single cart. You can only disprove it by finding a counterexample. So I guess the question is "Does anybody have a HES Challenge cart without Surfer's Paradise on it?"

 

I dont know about your challenge, but HES is Defo australian, i have several that are the same design label. i also picked up a U.S games Commando raid NTSC game here in australia. So how did that get here?

 

My other HES carts say the same thing about difficulty switch, ill try changing it and see what happens.

 

I'll second the Oz call. I tried switching the difficulty on two other HES carts with the same difficulty switch warning - Boom Bang (a Crackpots graphics hack) did nothing on diff. 'b' but Star Warrior (SW:ESB clone) made the screen roll with grey horizontal bars, like a cart with a bad ROM does. Maybe something here?

 

HES released a bunch of 2-Pak Specials, including a Challenge/Surfer's Paradise one. I'm guessing they relabelled some of these for the Challenge only cart and removed the game select screen. But why have an extra game and hide it? Maybe there was a legal threat? I wonder if some of the HES Boom Bang carts have a hidden Motocross on them like on the 2-Pak Special, and so on?

[rheffera]

Hmm. My HES Wall defender has a planet patrol in it!

 

Mine looks like this: http://axtelius.se/palimages/621.jpg

NOT this: http://axtelius.se/palimages/397.jpg

 

Maybe theroms are from the 2paks to save costs or legal issues or maybe just bad labelling?

Edited September 21, 2006 by rheffera

[Urchlay]

HES released a bunch of 2-Pak Specials, including a Challenge/Surfer's Paradise one. I'm guessing they relabelled some of these for the Challenge only cart and removed the game select screen. But why have an extra game and hide it?

 

It's even weirder than just hiding the extra game...

 

It'd be one thing if the cart ROM chip just contained the code for an extra 4K game that can't actually be played. The cart wouldn't need any bankswitching hardware, and the main game wouldn't need to be modified to include bankswitching code. Even a cart dumper wouldn't be able to see the extra 4K of ROM: it'd just be a standard cart with 4K worth of address lines hooked up, and no bankswitching. You'd have to open up the cart and do some soldering to get at the hidden 4K (or pull the chip and read the whole thing with e.g. an EPROM burner).

 

But what they actually did, took some effort: the cart has bankswitching circuitry, and both games had to be modified to make them read the difficulty switch at startup and switch banks if necessary (the standalone versions of both games are each 4K, with no banking hardware and presumably no banking code). This actually had to be done in the game code: the difficulty switch isn't directly wired to the cartridge port, so you can't just put circuitry on a cart that reads it (it has to be done in code).

 

What's more... the modified game code wouldn't work with the REAL 2-pak (the one with the menu). It has to use a different bankswitching scheme (it's 16K: 8K for the menu and 4K each for the games), and the games don't actually do bankswitching based on the difficulty switch. Instead, the menu ROM does the bankswitch to activate whichever game you want, based on your selection made with the joystick. If the actual games were the same versions as the "hidden game" cart, I'd expect that they'd still read the right diff switch, and whichever game you pick would bank in the other game, if the diff switch said to do so. I haven't checked, but I'd bet money that the versions of both games in the 2-pak-with-menu cart are identical to the standalone verions.

 

Maybe you're right, maybe they were going to release all these games as 2-paks, using the diff switch instead of a menu, and at the last minute some legal threat caused them to remove all references to the second game, and print new labels that just said "switch must be in the B position".

 

That doesn't quite fit, though... I thought I read somewhere that all HES releases were already pirates, so if they ran into legal problems, I'd expect they wouldn't release anything at all.

 

Also... people in Australia can't be that different from the people I know. Lots of people take a warning like "Difficulty switch must be in B position" as a challenge, and are compelled to see what happens if they break the rule (I was). I can't believe HES didn't know someone would find this... I can't believe nobody ever did find it before me, either.

[Rom Hunter]

I'm sure that this Boom Bang cart contains Motocross as well:

 

 

And that this one also contains Dolphin:

 

Any more difficulty switch HES labels?

 

Star Warrior perhaps?

 

Edited September 21, 2006 by Rom Hunter

[CincYnoTi]

Maybe these are all clues to finding the Holy Grail!

 

Anyway, here is the list I have of HES games sold as individual titles:

 

HES Boom Bang

HES Challenge

HES Pigs 'n' Wolf

HES Star Warrior

HES Wall Defender

 

Here are their 2 PAK counterparts that were on a single cart:

 

2PAK Motocross-Boom Bang

2PAK Challenge-Surfing

2PAK Dolphin-Pigs'n'wolf

2PAK StarWarrior-Frogger

2PAK PlanetPatrol-WallDefender

 

Here are the rest of the 2 PAKs on a single cart:

 

2PAK Alien Force-Hoppy (CosmicArk-QuickStep)

2PAK Cavern Blaster-CityWar (LaserGates-Atlantis)

2PAK DungeonMaster-CrtrStrk (Venture-DemonAttack)

2PAK SpaceVoyage-FireAlert (StarVoyager-FireFighter)

 

HES also released three "multipacks" that contained two Imagic titles on separate carts:

 

Imagic 2/1 Cosmic Ark/Quick Step

Imagic 2/1 Star Voyager/Fire Fighter

Imagic 2/1 Riddle of the Sphinx/Laser Gates

 

These Imagic titles were also released as a single game by HES:

Atlantis

Demon Attack

[Rom Hunter]

CincYnoTi, what about this multi-pack:

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...ERSION_ID=15650

 

I have never seen a picture of its box.

 

Do you know anything about it?

 

Edited September 21, 2006 by Rom Hunter

[CincYnoTi]

The only place I have ever seen or heard of that HERO multi is on your site. Where did you get that info? Do you have a photo of the cart or a ROM?

[Urchlay]

Hm, here's a thought.

 

Maybe HES was planning to sell Challenge and Surfers Paradise separately... the Challenge cart says "Right difficulty must be B", maybe they were planning to sell the same carts with different labels that say "Surfers Paradise - Right difficulty must be A". It maybe was cheaper to do all the carts the same, in one production run, and they were hoping they could trick people into buying both releases (which would be identical except for the labels).

 

Does anyone know if there was ever a HES release of Surfers Paradise other than the 2-pack with the menu?

 

The same theory would apply to any of the other HES "hidden game" carts... were any of the hidden games also released as HES carts?

[rheffera]

The mystery Deepens

[Rom Hunter]

The only place I have ever seen or heard of that HERO multi is on your site. Where did you get that info? Do you have a photo of the cart or a ROM?

It's on Marco's list.

 

That's reason enough for me to put it in our database.

 

According to him it comes in a plastic box.

 

Perhaps he can shed some more light on this one.

 

Edited September 22, 2006 by Rom Hunter

[Thomas Jentzsch]

If you have dumps from suspicious carts, CloneSpy will detect any hidden other games inside.

[Urchlay]

If you have dumps from suspicious carts, CloneSpy will detect any hidden other games inside.

 

Clonespy looks interesting. Any chance of getting the source?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Clonespy looks interesting. Any chance of getting the source?

No problem, but the code is a complete mess, written in stoneage Turbo Pascal.

[Urchlay]

Clonespy looks interesting. Any chance of getting the source?

No problem, but the code is a complete mess, written in stoneage Turbo Pascal.

 

Hey, I used to code in Turbo Pascal, back in the stone age

 

At least I should remember enough to be able to read the code and see how it works... and who knows? It might compile in GNU Pascal (I got your tune2600 code ported to Linux that way).

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Hey, I used to code in Turbo Pascal, back in the stone age

 

At least I should remember enough to be able to read the code and see how it works... and who knows? It might compile in GNU Pascal (I got your tune2600 code ported to Linux that way).

Ok, you asked for it.

 

If you could port it to a modern code base, it could become quite useful for other purpose too. I searched a lot, but never found a similar tool.

CloneSpy.zip

[Urchlay]

Ok, you asked for it.

 

If you could port it to a modern code base, it could become quite useful for other purpose too. I searched a lot, but never found a similar tool.

 

Will have a look... Do you consider ANSI C modern enough?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Will have a look... Do you consider ANSI C modern enough?

IMO something portable would be better. Java?