5200 Space Dungeon Prototype 1-20-83

[+swlovinist]

I wanted to share my recent prototype of Space Dungeon.   I have not had a chance to play this one but wanted to share it here.    I know that tempest has posted this one on his proto site, but wanted to see if this one matches the differences he posted with the date mentioned.    Please let me know if this is a good dump.   I won this off of Ebay and will include the backstory.    Thanks! 

 

Here's the backstory:  From 1983 to 1984, I worked at Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, the advertising agency for Atari home video games.  I served as the account executive on software advertising, promoting the game cartridges.  It was a dream job for a young man on Madison Avenue!

 

As new games were under development, we would receive prototype EPROM cartridges from the marketing folks at Atari in Sunnyvale, California.  We'd use these to produce advertising with screen shots of the gameplay.  When the ads were completed, we'd send the cartridges back to the Atari marketing team.  

 

When the Atari business fell apart in 1984, our work was stopped immediately.  Commercial production already in-progress was cancelled.  Our client contacts lost their jobs -- there was basically nobody left in Sunnyvale to send things back to.  

Space Dungeon 1-20-83.bin

Edited October 19, 2021 by swlovinist

[Kr0tki]

A bit late reply, but - your dump is correct, and while it is an overdump, it is otherwise identical to the known 1-20-83 prototype.

Edited November 19, 2021 by Kr0tki

[Tempest]

1 minute ago, Kr0tki said:

A bit late reply, but - your dump is correct, and while it is an overdump, it is otherwise identical to the known 1-20-83 prototype.

Have you ever dug into the 1-20 proto?  I saw a few minor things that were different but I bet there's tons of stuff I missed because I suck at Space Dungeon.

 

BTW here's a new 3-9 prototype that is very close to the final but has some differences that I haven't been able to suss out yet.

 

 

Space Dungeon 3-9.bin

[Kr0tki]

No, I don't have time to dig deeper...

 

The 3-9 prototype ROM only differs from the final version in the area of $3F09-$3F88, which is all zeroes in the proto, and filled with something in the final. This something is not code nor graphics data, and I was not able to force the game to use this ROM area with a few minutes of playing, so I don't know if this difference has any effect on the gameplay.

Edited November 19, 2021 by Kr0tki

[Tempest]

35 minutes ago, Kr0tki said:

No, I don't have time to dig deeper...

 

The 3-9 prototype ROM only differs from the final version in the area of $3F09-$3F88, which is all zeroes in the proto, and filled with something in the final. This something is not code nor graphics data, and I was not able to force the game to use this ROM area with a few minutes of playing, so I don't know if this difference has any effect on the gameplay.

That's weird.  Now I'm intrigued.  Maybe it was some kind of quick bug fix?  I hear there was possibly a bug where the exits from the treasure room on level 5 or 6 wouldn't appear and the player would be trapped. 

[Kr0tki]

I don't know. But it's notable that no other area of the cartridge is different, which means, if there is a code that accesses the $3F09-$3F88 area, it must have already been in place in the 3-9 proto, because no such code was added in the final version. But then, why such code would exist in the 3-9 proto, if the area in question was all zeroes at that time?

[Tempest]

Maybe they were going to add something but ran out of time (like an Easter egg)?  Either that or it was empty space that just got filled with garbage accidentally in the final?

 

btw is it zeros in the earlier proto as well?

[Kr0tki]

Garbage data is usually a duplicate of other areas of the cartridge, or sometimes parts of another cartridge; sometimes it's plain text source code. This one is neither.

 

The earlier proto is also all zeroes in this area.

 

 

Edited November 21, 2021 by Kr0tki

[Tempest]

Now I wonder if it is an easter egg or something.  Something crammed into some empty area of the prototype at the last minute.  I wish I could read assembly better.