Tower Toppler: What's wrong with mine?

[psquare75]

I've never gotten to play this game. Is my game cart bad? Whenever I fire it up... it goes "Level 1" Shows the tower.. plays a song. "Level 2" Shows a different tower... plays a song.. "Level 3". etc. etc. etc.

 

What the hell is going on?

[ZylonBane]

I've never gotten to play this game. Is my game cart bad? Whenever I fire it up... it goes "Level 1" Shows the tower.. plays a song. "Level 2" Shows a different tower... plays a song.. "Level 3". etc. etc. etc.

 

What the hell is going on?

Flip your difficulty switches. One of them activates the level-skip cheat.

[jaybird3rd]

Ah, the infamous "cheat mode." Set the left difficulty switch to the right and it will stop doing that (this is mentioned on the Tower Toppler page here on AtariAge).

 

It's a nice feature, but it's confused so many people that Atari really should have put a notice on the cartridge. I wonder how many customer support calls they got over it.

[GroovyBee]

From :-

 

http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=713

 

"You can cheat by setting the left difficulty switch to the left and the game will cycle through the towers so you can select the one you want."

 

So... its normal . Make sure all your difficulty switches are to the right.

[Rex Dart]

Yeah, I just found this out recently. Wish I'd read it before I returned the cart to the store I figured it was sun-baked from being in the window.

 

edit: I wish the ataris had a "neutral" position for those pesky switches. I never know if I'm playing the standard version of a game, or some altered version because of 'em.

Edited July 15, 2010 by Rex Dart

[gdement]

It must be the dumbest cheat code of any game ever. With a 50% chance you'll trigger it, it doesn't even really count as a secret, just a confusing bug. I wonder if it's a test version, not the one they were supposed to publish.

 

edit: I wish the ataris had a "neutral" position for those pesky switches. I never know if I'm playing the standard version of a game, or some altered version because of 'em.

Having 3 modes would probably be more user friendly, as you could at least assume the middle position is normal/average difficulty, with "easy" and "hard" also offered. Electronically though having 3 modes would be awkward. 2 is convenient because it's a simple binary value, represented by 5V or GND on one signal line.

 

With 2 modes, what Atari should have done is to put some color (I'd say red) on one side so you know which way is "beginner" vs "advanced". Either that or label each side with words on the shell. The old 6-switch VCS was marked "B/A" but that still isn't clear if you don't know what the letters stand for.

[Rex Dart]

Do they even stand for anything? It seems pretty inconsistent between games which one is "easy" and which is "hard". And I wouldn't think a three-position would be all that tricky. You'd either have 5V on line 1, 5v on line 2, or 0v.

Edited July 23, 2010 by Rex Dart

[DracIsBack]

I wonder if it's a test version, not the one they were supposed to publish.

 

I wondered this as well. It seems really obvious.

 

It even states in the manual "keep the switches in X position". I bet it was suppsoed to be removed and they forgot - realizing after the cartridges were in manufacturing.

 

 

Difficulty switches hardly get used in any 7800 games.