10 Years of Hacking

[+Atarius Maximus]

It's been just over 10 years since I joined AtariAge. Nearly 100% of my posts between 2002 and 2005 were in the hacks forum, and after all this time they still account for about 25% of my total posts on AA. Once I discovered batari Basic I pretty much switched over to that rather than hacking, but I've always enjoyed looking at disassembled files and seeing what I could do to change them.

I admit it's a bit self serving (my apologies), but I thought it'd be fun to repost all of my old hacks from years ago as most people probably don't search back to the early days of the hacks forum. I remember being excited when the original Hack-O-Matic came out (thanks Rob Kudla!) as using the old DOS based showgfx/editgfx was pretty tedious. I then started looking at disassemblies and using DASM to change them which was a whole lot more fun. I downloaded everything from Paul Slocum's minidig, and after spending a ton of time looking over all of it put most of it on my own site, www.bjars.com, along with a bunch of other stuff from AA. So, just for the heck of it, here's all of my old hacks that were posted here in one zip file, there's 34 in all. I may have to do this same thing in the bB forum next, I've got a whole bunch of original games I've worked on since 2006. The zip file includes all of the hacks listed below.

Adventure Plus, 3/1/2003, All New Map, mazes & Sprites from the original. My first hack using a disassembly. I even won a Stan award for "Hack of the Year" in 2003, I still have the award hanging in my game room. I wish it was still given out.
Pitfall Trainer, 3/6/2003, Unlimited Lives AND Time! I was terrible at Pitfall as kid, this rekindled my interest in exploring the game.
DragRace, 4/9/2003, Dragster Hack with Stock Cars. One of my all time favorite games. I updated the cars to look like the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard.
(KevinMos improved this hack and I loved it, see this link http://www.atariage....-xenophobe-etc/ for his updates)
SpyBob, 12/3/2003, James Bond version of Kabobber.
Indy500 Alternate Tracks, 4/23/2003, All New Tracks in Indy 500. Another one of my favorites from childhood.
Marauder II, 10/14/2004, All New Maps and Sprites for Marauder.
Defender Vector, 12/26/2003, Defender with Vector Graphics. There was a "vector craze" in late 2003, search the forums to find out.
DragonFire Easy, 3/17/2004, Dragon's Fireballs cant reach you. Very easy! I started messing around with Dragonfire after the original commented source code was released.
DragonFire Really Easy, 3/17/2004, No Fireballs and you have a super run speed. Ridiculously Easy!
DragonFire Sadistic, 3/17/2004, Insanely Fast Fireballs! Insanely difficult! I did reach the 4th castle, though!
DragRace Auto-Shift, 3/18/2004, Dragster Hack with automatic shifting. I added the auto-shift code courtesy of Thomas Jentzsch.
Space Race, 6/3/2005, I hacked Freeway into the classic arcade game Space Race.
Space Race Sadistic, 6/3/2005, A MUCH Faster Version of Space Race, it's hard to get one ship past the asteroids!
Solaris Trainer, 6/21/2005, Unlimited Lives in Solaris. I saw after I made this that it'd already been done.
Defender Trainer, 6/22/2005, Unlimited lives in Defender.
Adventure Plus 2005, 8/3/2005, My updated version of Adv+. It was intended for a cart release by Packrat but never happened due to copyright concerns. I honestly don't remember what I changed.
Seaquest Trainer, 8/5/2005, Unlimited Lives in Seaquest. Another old favorite.
Adventure Plus 2005 w/Invisible Map, 8/3/2005, Adv+ 2005 with all Invisible rooms. Yes, it's crazy hard.
Atlantis Trainer, 12/3/2005, Unlimited lives in Imagic's classic shooter.
Berzerk Sadistic, 12/29/2005, The robots start Faster and you only have one life. Truly Sadistic.
Donkey Kong Low Gravity, 12/29/2005, You can jump Higher & Longer, but it can make the game harder.
Jawbreaker Trainer, 12/29/2005, Unlimited Lives in Jawbreaker.
Big Bucket Kaboom, 12/29/2005, Huge Buckets in Kaboom.
Montezuma's Revenge Trainer, 1/3/2006, Unlimited Lives for Panama Joe.
StarWarsTAG-RC, 3/17/2006, Reversed Control Scheme. Up is up, down is down, much more natural for me and makes the game more fun.
Yars Revenge Sadistic, 12/29/2005, You only have 1 Life, there's no Neutral Zone, and the game is faster.
Yars Revenge FM-NNZ-4L, 12/29/2005, You have 4 Lives, there's no neutral zone, the game is faster.
Yars Revenge FM-4L, 12/29/2005, The missiles are faster, you start with 4 Lives.
Yars Revenge NNZ-4L, 12/29/2005, Normal speed game, there is no neutral zone, you start with 4 Lives.
Airlock Trainer, 3/29/2010, You have unlimited lives. This game always frustrated me. I didn't realize how short it was until after I made this trainer.
Demon Attack - Small Enemies, 3/30/2010, Enemies are always the small type. Much harder to hit them.
Demon Attack - Fast Shot, 3/30/2010, Super fast shots from your ship. Easier, and pretty fun to take them out quickly.
Demon Attack - No Fire back, 3/30/2010, Enemies do not fire back. Yes, it's ridiculously easy.
Demon Attack - Start w/6 lives, 3/30/2010, You start the game with 6 lives.

Steve

 

EDIT: I created some new river raid hacks today, and I thought I'd add them to this old post too to make it complete.

 

• River Raid Turbo - Push up for 'Turbo mode' and you'll see your ship flies much faster. Left/Right movement speed was also increased.
• River Raid Turbo (with Fast Shot) - Same as the prior version but with faster shots from your jet.
• River Raid (Fuel Tank is always Full) - No need to fill your fuel tank, it's stuck on Full all the time.
• River Raid (Fast Shot) - Your missile fires much faster than normal.
• River Raid (Fly over land) - Collision detection is turned off for hitting the river banks, you can fly over land.
• River Raid Trainer - Unlimited Lives & Fuel and collision detection is turned off.

AtariusMaximusHacks.zip

riverraid_always-full-tank.bin

riverraid_fast-shot.bin

riverraid_fly-over-land.bin

riverraid_trainer.bin

riverraid_turbo.bin

riverraid_turbo_fast-shot.bin

[Gateway]

Congrats on reaching 10 years!

 

I also will hit the 10 year mark in a few days. I remember most of these Hacks and I have learned a lot from you and from your batari Basic programs over the years. Also your CYOA utility. Thank you for all of your contributions so far. Here is to another 10 years!

[raindog]

I admit it's a bit self serving (my apologies), but I thought it'd be fun to repost all of my old hacks from years ago as most people probably don't search back to the early days of the hacks forum. I remember being excited when the original Hack-O-Matic came out (thanks Rob Kudla!)

 

You're welcome I'm glad you went on to code hacking, though. I often regretted making Hack-o-matic, though I know if I hadn't, someone else would have. Anyway, I remember Adventure Plus and enjoyed it.

 

Looks like it was 10 years for me last month. I consider AtariAge a continuation of the [stella] list, though, and I was on that several years earlier. If the date on my profile is accurate, I actually joined AtariAge after I'd stopped doing Atari projects... which sounds a little off. But I still prefer mailing lists over web fora (showing my age, I know, but mailing lists give me infinite archiving and more control over UI), so maybe I was a holdout.

[+stephena]

I hit 10 years in May 2002, but I'd been on the stella list for about 2 years before that. And all that time working on Stella (on and off, with sometimes up to 8 month breaks in between). Where does the time go?

[snstay]

Awesome thanks for the back catalog! You are right about me not going back to search for these old gems.

 

Thanks

Scott

[+Atarius Maximus]

I actually joined in August 2002, but was a forum lurker for a long time before then. I finally dove in and started posting often after starting to work on my first hack of Adventure. Joel Park's Adventure disassembly is what got me interested in making code changes and making hacks beyond just sprite changes. I actually posted my original Adventure Plus hack in the normal 2600 forum, as the hacks forum didn't exist yet. Al moved it there after he created it. I just took a quick look at the first few pages of the hacks forum, and my first post here was in the 17th topic, in response to an Atlantis hack from cybergoth.

 

@Gateway - Yep, I remember your posts from way back when too. I agree, here's to another 10 years!

 

@Rob - I loved hack-o-matic, but with that said I didn't include the dozens of useless graphic hacks of space invaders and pac-man in my archive of hacks that I just posted. There's enough of those out there already. It was really fun to use in the early days, but once I figured out the basics of distella, DASM, and how to read the numerous commented disassemblies out there there was no turning back. It's way more fun and much more challenging to change a disassembly and make a functional hack than just change some sprites!

 

@stephena - Thanks for all the work you've done on Stella, I know it's a labor of love and it's definitely the best emulator available. And yes, time flies!

 

@snstay - There are so many more great old hacks and mine are nowhere near the best. Among others, look at every hack that Nukey Shay has ever made.