[VIDEO GAME
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BTECH: atari B.ugs T.ricks E.ggs C.heats and H.awaii!
BTECH
was originally compiled by gkomatsu@hawaii.edu in 1995.
I've edited out 'frying the 2600' tricks and tricks
for the 7800 and converted the document to html, but
credit for the document still goes to him.
Below is a list of Easter Eggs, Cheats, Bugs, Tricks,
and whatnots in classic Atari [2600] videogames. This
is an informal list, so I'm not expecting to win any
documentation awards. I don't really edit the entries
by others unless I feel like rewording them. The grammar
(in mine anyways =^) may be bad, the format poor,
but it does give the explanations.
This list if far from complete, if you know something
is missing, (or discover something new) write an explanation
of the trick and it's effect, and I'll include it
in the list...
Controller Tricks
Some tricks involve using the "wrong" controller for
a game, some involve opening up your controller (the
joystick in all cases I know of) to perform "impossible"
movements (i.e. up _and_ down at the same time.) Also,
certain ones won't work on the 2600jr. or 7800.
ACTIVISION GAMES
Many games will turn the score into !!!!!! (or some
other message in some games) when you max it out.
ACTIVISION DECATHLON - Activision
On the Pole Vault, quickly tap the button as you release
the pole, you'll go soaring. Put Bruce Jenner to shame!
ADVENTURE - Atari
Start a game then press SELECT to get the game selection
screen (with the number in the center). Pull down
and Hero will appear. (You can't do anything but move
around the screen however.)
Hit SELECT as soon as you finish and you'll hear the
ending fanfare play really slow.
Placing the bridge at the bottom of the screen and
crossing it (off the screen) will sometimes get you
"stuck" on top of a castle.
On game two or three, go to the maze in the Black
Castle. One screen left of the first maze screen will
flicker if you carry an object in there meaning one
thing, there's ANOTHER object in there. At the bottom
center of this room is a closed off cubicle, use the
bridge to get in there and you should pick up a "dot".
Carry this to the screen just above the catacombs
(one screen down and to the right of the Gold Castle)
and be careful not to lose it as it's the same color
as the outside ground. Drop it there and bring two
other items onto the screen, run right through the
line on the right side of the screen and witness the
first ever Easter Egg.
ADVENTURES OF TRON - M Network Hold Select Down and turn on the Atari 2600 (or
press Reset). The programmer's names/credits will
appear under the title.
ASTROBLAST - M Network
If you force the system to track the maximum number
of objects with seperate velocities that it can (about
five) and then shoot a large rock, it will disappear
without fragmenting into smaller rocks.
BASIC PROGRAMMING - Atari
Turn off all the windows except "program", and keep
pressing "new line" (effectivly entering NO-OP lines).
After line 9 of this empty program, you will get "line
10" and "line 11", except that the line numbers will
be random blobs instead of "10" and "11". Apparently,
they didn't think people would write more than 9 lines
of code. :-)
BASKETBALL - Atari Plugging in the second joystick lets you get some
control over the computer player (and bring it down
to a level humans can handle. =^)
BERZERK - Atari
Horizontal robot fire will travel harmlessly through
your neck (or lack of one.)
BUMP 'N JUMP - M Network Don't destroy anyone and you'll get 50,000 points
plus an extra car at the end of each course.
SELECT lets you continue from where you last finished
your game.
BREAKOUT - Atari
Select a "catch" game and catch your last ball. Press
SELECT and release the ball. You'll play in the attract
mode (complete with color shift!) score no points,
but you'll keep getting new balls when you miss.
CARNIVAL - Coleco Holding down the fire button as you power the
system on causes a dot to appear in the top row of
targets. Shooting the dot before it leaves the screen
(it then turns into a duck) will reveal the programmer's
name. ("Programmed by S. Kitchen" S=Steve)
CANYON BOMBER - Atari The game calls for paddles, but the Land Bomber
games can be played with a joystick. Pushing right
and left causes teh red and yellow planes to fire,
respectively.
CHESS - Atari Select game 6 or 7, while thinking it's next move,
the computer will move pieces! [well, these are the
_hard_ levels. =^) ed.]
COMBAT - Atari Holding down RESET and the fire button lets your
shot travel all the way across the screen.
Positioning your tank just right and firing into the
upper left corner causes your shot to "warp" and come
out from the top right corner.
Open up your joystick and push down on all the contacts
to let your tank do warp speed. Similiar can also
be done by plugging in paddle controllers and pressing
both buttons.
"Dancing Tanks" Get the tanks together and set things
up so one's turret is flat against the other tank,
thrn the tank so the turret runs into the other tank
and both tanks will sometimes go spinning in circles.
Flying Tanks - Pick game 9. Rotate left player's tank
180 degrees, and fire. The shot will ricochet around
and hit the opposing tank, causing both tanks start
flying to the left, scrolling the screen 3-4 times,
then stopping. Using the right player's tank in the
procedure will cause the two tanks to switch sides.
Move your tank into one of the corners along the edges
of the screen, flush up against the clockwise wall
(the one to your right if you point into the corner),
and face the counterclockwise wall (such that you
have one wall to your right and the other in front
of you). Now push your stick up, and you'll start
bumping into the wall in front of you. Then move your
stick to the up-left diagonal. Your tank will turn
left slightly, bump into the wall in front of you,
and get moved back through the wall to your right
a little bit, and deposited in the next corner counterclockwise
from you (which can be at the far side of the screen).
This can be used strategically. ;-)
COMMUNIST MUTANTS FROM SPACE - Arcadia/Starpath
Hold down the joystick button while loading and
the "HI" on the score screen will change to "SHL",
the author's initials. (Steven H. Landrum)
COSMIC ARK - Imagic Some carts lets you turn the star field to be
turned on and off with the TV-Type switch. (These
have smaller & lighter type on their labels.)
CRAZY CLIMBER - Atari
Pressing SELECT at certain will produce various effects:
before the opening tune ends, the game will freeze
on the last note, RESET unfreezes the game.
when a girder falls, the game will pause momentarily
as all sprite data is cycled through the girder's
location.
when the evil doctor drops things will pause things
momentarily, as sprite data is cycled through the
dropping item. He will not drop anything else after
and the last sound for him will play for a bit longer.
when the eagle is droping eggs, breaks them!
while you're climbing or hanging on, freezes things.
RESET resumes.
while you're falling, produces a momentary pause.
DEFENDER - Atari Get to the 25th wave, and capture a humanoid.
Fly to the 25th line of resolution (the height your
ship starts from) and any remaining enemies will change
to "BP", Bob Polaro.
If a Baiter is chasing you, position yourself so it
is above you, screech to a halt and it will "land"
on you.
DEMON ATTACK - Imagic On some/most/all? copies of the game, the game
will "shut off" after wave 84 is completed. (games
5-8 begin on wave 13 so it "appears" to stop after
72) Keep shooting the middle demon until only the
top & bottom ones remain. Now shoot the bottom one
and go get something to drink, the remaining demon
(at the top) won't drop down.
DESERT FALCON - Atari Get a superpower and swim near the top of a lake
(before you lose it) to make the programmer's initials
to appear. Easiest way is to get invincibility (bird-cane-feather).
DRAGONFIRE - Imagic Let a fireball catch your legs just as you leave
the treasure room, this seems to hurt the next player
more than it does you. Jump, then immediately pull
opposite the direction you're facing (keeping the
button down), you'll seemingly run "backwards" for
a bit before turning around. (nothing useful really.)
DRAGONSTOMPER - Starpath Enter "use shield" command while the image of
the axe is on the screen and "SHL" will appear. (SHL
= programmer's initials, same as Communist Mutants.
On a side note, the Supercharger version of Frogger,
SHL's 3rd game, does not contain a "name" egg.)
During the first load, arrange to die near a castle.
Then press reset and run into a castle trap before
the copyright at the start of the game clears the
screen, and you may leave it without any loss of strength
or use of normal escape trap procedure, though the
trap will appear and the screen will say "Trap". The
trick only seems to work 1-3 times, though.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - Parker Bros. If you have a rapid fire controller (or very fast
fingers) you can destroy the Walkers twice each and
be awarded double points. Every 8 shots weakens it
one color, and 48 shots destroys it. Blast a yellow
Walker to hell and if you can hit it 8 more times
after the 48th hit before it disintegrates you'll
destroy it again. Saving the last shot for the bomb
hatch will give over 250 points.
E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL - Atari Extend E.T.'s head just as the mother ship arrives.
E.T. will be too tall and his "butt" will stick out
the bottom of the ship.
"Kill" E.T. on the landing pad while waiting for the
ship. If Elliot is able to make it to the screen,
but not save you when the ship arrives, the ship will
crash down and so will the game.
FAST EDDIE - Sirius-Fox TV-Type pauses game. When paused, the maze cycles
through a rainbow of colors. Flip it up and it stays
on that color. With good timing, you can choose the
mazes color! Holding down Reset lets you choose a
ladder arrangement.
FATHOM - Imagic After releasing the mermaid the seventh time,
Imagic's address will appear at the bottom of the
screen.
FROGGER - Parker Bros. Set the difficulty so that your frog may travel
off the screen (on the back of a turtle or log), jump
on a right moving log and go off the edge of the screen.
The instant you see your frog reappear on the left
side, jump left and you'll be warped to the middle
of the screen. (and perhaps die if nothing is there.)
GHOSTBUSTERS - Activision (see 2600Connection #10)
G.I.JOE - Parker Bros. In the two player cooperative game (difficulty
1), the eighth hit on the fifteenth cobra causes "JE"
to appear. [what's "JE"? ed.]
GORF - CBS Games Rolling the score produces weird digits. Moreso
every time you roll it over. Secret message at some
point?
HALLOWEEN - Wizard As you're about the leave the left or right edge
of the screen, gently edge up to the exit (without
leaving) and a dash will appear on your head. Most
likely just a glitch in the software.
INDY 500 - Atari In the race variations, an invisible line down
the center of the screen is used to count laps. You
can fool the computer by driving small circles in
the center.
If you don't have the driving controllers but have
a keypad controller (the touch pad with Star Raiders
and children's controllers will work too) you can
still play. Pressing 0 and # simultaneously gives
you gas. To turn 90 degrees clockwise, press and hold
5, press and hold 2, release 5, release 2. Do the
reverse to turn counter-clockwise.
LASER BLAST - Activision
Fire quickly so you don't leave aim mode, this will
prevent you from being pushed up after shooting the
three tanks.
KABOOM! - Activision
Score 10,000 points and "surprise" the Mad Bomber.
=^o
KRULL - Atari A rapid fire controller will make grabbing objects
much easier.
If you're touched by the spider in the web, keep jumping
and you'll hear the sound effect even after you've
been killed.
On the web screen, just over and below the Cocoon
are spots where your score will increase if you keep
jumping there. It only works when web strands are
moving away (on the easy levels).
MISSILE COMMAND - Atari
SELECT game 13. Let missiles rain on all your cities
and waste all your missiles without scoring any points.
The rubble of the rightmost city will change to "RF",
the programmer's initials (Rob Fulop)
When the game first begins, fire three missiles at
the top part of the screen (the highest the cursor
will go). Then, RESET the game before the missiles
explode. You'll still see the missiles, and when they
explode you may get some free points. Sometimes it
takes a few tries, but once in a great while you get
a jackpot of points (I think my highest cheat was
around 1200 points on a Level 1 game).
MOUNTAIN KING - CBS Electronics [the following two entries are in the words of
their contributors, I haven't tried them (haven't
gotten to playing the game yet) so don't ask me questions
on them...I also have a feeling they both describe
the same trick... - gkomatsu@hawaii.edu]
This one is really hard to do. There are two jumps
you can make in Mountain King. One is a short jump
and the other is a long jump that can only be done
immediately after a short one. Do a long jump from
the top of the highest peak (the one with the campfire
on it) and let the guy go as high as he can. On the
way down you will notice a couple of platforms a few
ladder spontaneously appear in midair. If you can
make this same jump from as far right on the mountain
peak as possible, you can catch one of the ladders
in midair as you are coming down. If you catch it,
you can climb up it an there is whole lot of weird
stuff up there you can explore. Nothing that gives
you points are even helps in the game, but its an
interesting bug. NOTE: Things tend to spontaneously
appear and disappear up there. While exploring in
this region take a lot of time and very carefully
watch what you do. I have had platforms dissapear
from underneath me and send me crashing back down
to the regular mountain.
There is a whole secret level(room). It is very hard
to get to, but with pratice I can reach it within
10-15 minutes. If you go to the very top of the mountain
where the fire is, and go one ledge below standing
just to the left directly under the flame. Then jump
to the left, if you do it right the character will
sortof hop skip and take a very high flying leap.
As you are flying upward, just when you are about
to start descending, there will be a patern of 4 dashes
- - - -
If you hit the upper right (or lower right, cant
remember) dash correctly and hop, you will go even
higher to a ladder. Grab the ladder and welcome to
the secret level. There are all kinds of weird stuff,
usually your character will turn very large and the
game will freeze, but sometimes you can go pretty
far. As you move ladders will disappear and objects
will move on the screen. There was a pattern, and
every time I made it up there I would get a little
farther without locking the game. There may very well
be something up there if you keep trying. The location
of the dashes and ladder leads me to beleive that
they wanted someone to find it and it was just not
by accident!!
MOUSE TRAP Starting the game with the B&W/Color switch
set to B&W enables an invisible maze.
MS. PAC-MAN - Atari Press up & down at the same time. Ms. Pac-Man
will go left and get stuck in a wall.
Let the game enter the demo mode, then play with Game
Select. The monsters will appear and disappear as
they move around, depending on the difficulty that's
currently selected. Useless, but amusing.
OMEGA RACE - CBS Electronics If you don't have the booster grip, you can use
a Colecovision joystick to play, using the left and
right buttons. or...
You can "play" with paddles. The buttons turn your
ship, and turning the paddles clockwise will fire
and thrust, but you must turn them back counter-clockwise
to keep firing or stop thrusting.
PAC-MAN - Atari Enter escape-tunnel, quickly go up & down in tunnel
a few times without coming out. Go down as your last
move and Pac-Man will "wipe" into the screen. He can
now move up & down in this vertical plane through
the walls, but not sideways. Hey may eat vitamins
and get killed by ghosts. (Not particularly useful,
but interesting.)
PETE ROSE BASEBALL - Absolute Entertainment When your team is coming off the field after the
third out, hold down the button. As soon as you come
up to bat the opponent's pitcher will automatically
throw a strike over the place for an easy hit (for
two player game)
PITFALL! - Activision (See 2600 Connection #9 for map.)
Use the stock Atari joystick, climb to the top of
a ladder and pound straight down on the joystick (I
usually slap down flat down like I'm trying to "impale"
my palm.) Harry will jump straight up...and fall back
down. Nothing useful, just interesting.
PITFALL II: LOST CAVERNS - Activision (See 2600 Connection #10 for map.)
PLANET PATROL - Spectravision Pull down to the bottom of the screen immediately
after rescuing the stranded pilot, and the "randomly
located" enemy bases will always be in their three
lowest postions.
POPEYE - Parker Bros. Get nine or more hearts, and then purposely die.
Once you start your next life, you go to the right
off of the ledge, immediately get the spinach and
hit Bluto/Brutus. If you do it quickly, your score
will become 155,120 (or thereabouts), and if you have
died twice already, your score will be 144,120 (or
something like that).
Start playing and then hold down the reset button--the
music will play about an octave lower. Seems only
to work on the older 2600 console, and not on the
2600jr and 7800.
Q*BERT - Parker Bros. Jump to the top of the pyramid. When Coily's on
one of the cubes below you and ready to pounce, jump
up-right off the pyramid. Coily will follow you, you'll
get the points for killing him, and you won't lose
your life!!! With this trick you could potentially
reset the score counter without ever leaving the first
pyramid.
If you time it carefully, you can jump right through
coily or a red ball; jump toward the square something
is on just as it's about to move toward you (this
is easiest just as coily coils to spring). Once you
get the timing down, it becomes difficult to actually
die.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK - Atari (See 2600 Connection #7.)
Go to the flying saucer mesa with the Chai and parachute
(latter optional.) Walk off the mesa and drop the
Chai when you start falling. The _Yar_ will appear
at the top of the screen.
With a sufficiently high score (which will include
the above) puts "HSW2" in your inventory when you
finish the game. ("HSW" = Howard Scott Warshaw, the
game's author "2" indicates his second game.)
RETURN OF THE JEDI - Parker Bros. If you lose your last ship while avoiding the
Death Star explosion and you are about 200 points
from earning an extra ship, you'll get the extra ship,
but the game will still end, with the extra ship being
displayed!
Hitting SELECT pauses the game (blanks out the screen)
touching the joystick resumes play.
REACTOR - Parker Bros. While in "attract mode" you can move your ship
around. After the game ends, if you move your ship
to the top of the screen and get as close to the top
corner as you can, your ship will bump some sort of
invisible thing and you will get points.
top wall
------------------------
the * represents the "magic corner" / *\
By bumping into this "magic corner" after the game
is over, you can earn enough points to get a free
guy and continue the game where you left off. It's
ok if you hit the wall while you are trying to do
this, but it may slow your progress down a bit.
ROAD RUNNER - Atari (see 2600 Connection #19)
There are rumors of the programmer's initials in the
game.
SKIING - Activision To make the game easier, flick the left difficulty
B A B to reenter your skiier.
SOLAR FOX - CBS Electronics The layouts on the first six screens spell out
H-E-L-I-O-S.
SOLARIS - Atari (See 2600 Connection #8.)
SPACE INVADERS - Atari Hold RESET when you power on the system. Start
the game, and you'll have double shots. This will
only work for game #1.
SPIDER FIGHTER - Activision The left difficulty switch sets the game easy
or hard. The hard (A) setting gives you more points,
but if you switch it back to the easy setting, you'll
get the "hard difficulty" points while the game is
at easy difficulty.
STAMPEDE - Activision Rolling over the score causes steer heads to appear.
STAR RADIERS - Atari After finishing the game you can sometimes change
your rank & rating by pressing the Hyperwarp Key (3):
Scout 3 --> Cook 5 Pilot 1 --> Atari 3
STEEPLECHASE - Sears Play with joystick instead of paddles to control
two horses (push left and right)
STREET RACER - Atari In number cruncher, "wiggling" paddle will sometime
cause you to get "jammed" on a number. Usually you'll
rack up points to 99 quickly.
SUPER CHALLENGE BASEBALL - M Network Normally the player at bat can only run clockwise
or counter clockwise around the bases. However, if
you move the joystick back and forth fairly quickly,
your man will "walk" out into the outfield. You can
make him go off the top of the screen and appear back
at the bottom! Many strange effects can happen when
the man is far from his normal place, such as an invisible
batter, the pitcher will be in the wrong place, etc.
Use the 2600 trackball (in trackball mode) while pitching.
Unpredictable results!
SUPER FOOTBALL - Atari When a team jucjs a good field goal or extra point
as the time expires, both teams wave in victory. Also
happens if the winning team score rolls over, giving
a seemingly lower score.
SUPERMAN - Atari Hold down the button down as you power on the
game. Wait for two seconds to pass and release. Superman
won't change into Clark Kent, and the bridge won't
explode. You'll find the bridge pieces in the subway,
but don't worry about it. All you need to do is capture
Lex Luthor and his men (and return to the Daily Planet).
This big may only work on text-label copies.
TAPE WORM - Spectravision Good timing and a gentle touch on reset will allow
you to choose where the first prize dot appears.
TAX AVOIDERS - American Videogame If you pick up ALL the objects on the first screen
(including the Red Tape which you normally want to
avoid) the screen will begin to flicker, like the
vertical hold on your TV was mis-adjusted!
TUNNEL RUNNER - CBS Electronics Instant Transport - Anytime during a Run, if you
are in need of a quick escape, HOLD the button down
and rotate the joystick in a circle (either left or
right) and it will perform an emergency transport.
Can be used only ONCE per Run.
The game will go completely crazy after you complete
127 levels.
TURMOIL - CBS Electronics TV-Type pauses game. When paused, the maze cycles
through a rainbow of colors. Flip it up and it stays
on that color.
TUTANKHAM - Parker Bros. Hold down RESET while turning the system on, release
after the intro music begins to play. The game will
begin with no key, gun, special weapon or meters.
When you die, two of your meters will reappear, and
you'll get your special weapon. You can't exit this
level.
VANGUARD - Atari In the Stripe Zone, you can choose to go either
right or left. If you go right, then only the enemies
which reside on that side will show up, and the same
goes for the left side. The trick: stay on the right
side until the Energy Pod appears. Then take the left
path. The Energy Pod will rhythmically switch between
a forward E and a backward E.
On Vanguard, toggle select and you can see what appears
to be .531 (the one is underlined) or .53L (the L
is backwards) in a vertical column flash on the screen.
Freeze framing it on a VCR reveals that there are
two variations: one a brief flash, the other a picture
of the first level with the number and an unusually
colored background.
VIDEO PINBALL - Atari When you hit the bonus-points rollover a few times,
RESET the game. When you lose the first ball on the
next game, the bonus points will count down!! Depending
on how many times it counted, it'll stop on some number
other than 1, and that will be the base number for
the rest of the game. When you shoot the ball, hit
the SELECT button and enjoy the 2600's first true
Demo Mode. Complete with the color-cycling!
XENOPHOBE - Atari
Flip the TV-Type switch back & forth once to pause
the game. For 7800 users, this means just pressing
the Pause button once.
YAR'S REVENGE - Atari Kill Swirl in mid-air. Position Yar so that spot
on it's back is in the same vertical plane as the
black "streak". Programmer's initials will appear
after explosion (HSWWSH = Howard Scott Warshaw)
Contributors: Thanks!
(many tricks pulled from "The 2600 Connection")
Christopher Mark Donnell 7236@ef.gc.maricopa.edu
Ed Federmeyer ed@iitmax.acc.iit.edu
Vineet Gossain vin@po.EECS.Berkeley.EDU
Kirk Israel kisrael@Jade.Tufts.EDU
David C. Jones djones@ponder.csci.unt.edu
Kris Kelley gt6005a@prism.gatech.edu
Brian Kendig bskendig@netcom.com
Ken Kuhns ken@genesis.mc.maricopa.edu
Craig Pell (VGR) vgriscep@wam.umd.edu
Mark mrathwel@uoguelph.ca
Joshua See smtc104@uoft02.utoledo.edu
Scott Stone TAFOID@delphi.com
Bob Schultz ras2441@engult.lxe.com
Marc Sira ub675@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
Phil stewarpj@bigvax.alfred.edu
Noel Tominack NOEL@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU
--
.,--,_
,-._,'x <--KYZYL
(_,-.__ ,-.,' gkomatsu@hawaii.edu
~~
BTECH
was originally compiled by gkomatsu@hawaii.edu in 1995.
I've edited out 'frying the 2600' tricks and tricks
for the 7800 and converted the document to html, but
credit for the document still goes to him.
2008 ben langberg, all rights reserved.