Combo Screen: Treasure Cove / Incredible Wizard

[ballyalley]

A few weeks ago I was testing and comparing all of the programs on Ken Lill's latest Ultimulti cartridge (version 3.0) against the listing of programs that he made for it. My method of testing the programs is to switch the cartridge's DIP switches while the machine is still on and then press the reset button on the console to bring up the new game. Sometimes, before I press reset, this causes some pretty weird effects on the TV screen. Most of the time this looks like garbage or a program crash (which, technically, is what is happening because I'm switching out part of the ROM while the program is actually running).

 

On rare occasions, the crashes look a little artistic. Rarer still are programs that continue to run, but act very strangely. Take this weird mish-mash of both Treasure Cove and The Incredible Wizard; it's an insanely cool Treasure Cove title screen mixed in with the maze from The Incredible Wizard:

 

This happened while I was switching from one game to the other. Note that that DIP switch positions have only one bit difference between them:

Treasure Cove - DIPSwitch position $3B, or 00111011B

to

The Incredible Wizard - DIPSwitch position $33, or 00110011B

I tried to duplicate this feat again with no luck. I want to mention that this unusual picture is not a fault of the UltiMulti cartridge. This results from normal operation of the Astrocade. This reminds me of the Atari 2600 technique of "frying" (turning the Atari system on and off very quickly) which can get some very strange, and sometimes predictable, results.

Has anyone else seen strange effects like this? I'd love to see some pictures of other unusual occurrences.

Adam

Edited August 23, 2017 by ballyalley
Corrected Spelling Errors