Frying tricks with the ATARI 2600!

[retrorussell]

Hey all.

I hear about numerous tricks with numerous home consoles that some would label as "dangerous" to your cartridge or actual console.  I have tried at least some of them (yank the cart/swap the cart, frying the cart) and never once have I had anything bad happen to either game or console.  With that said:

FRYING is a method on the Atari 2600/VCS in which the ON/OFF switch is jiggled slightly, between the ON and OFF positions, making usually some odd screen jibberish occur, like jumbled, incoherent sprites; weird graphics; truly awful audio; lines and colors across the screen where they shouldn't be; etc.  But sometimes-- just sometimes (and you may have to turn the game off and try again)-- you may uncover a trick that totally helps you out and makes the game easier, or maybe slightly easier.  

Or it may just make something interesting of note happen.

Whether it be helpful or exceptionally interesting, what "Frying" tricks can you folks come up with?

 

 

Oh, by the way: the awesome emulator STELLA (or variants of it) has a Frying option (hit the BACKSPACE key), obviously guaranteed not to harm the Atari 2600 that isn't the real thing.

 

One I want to throw out there:

PITFALL! (1982 Activision/David Crane)

If you can get your character Pitfall Harry to look like he's pink and wearing only a tube top (!), he will float through the air as you move the joystick.. high above the dangers below.  UNTIL you press the button, which drops him back to Earth.  If your goal is to get all the treasures before the timer elapses, you can go right 11 screens without dealing with any obstacles (until you need to drop and get a treasure), saving you perhaps a little bit of precious time.  Note that brick walls, score, Activision blurb and the scorpion are weird looking too.  If Pitfall Harry becomes a different color through frying then the logs probably won't look right and the screens will repeat over and over, and you can't complete the game like normal (and the treasures may not appear).

 

 

Feel free to post any interesting/helpful "Frying" tricks you know of, folks!  And maybe play around with Stella to find new ones!  

[zzip]

My favorite game to fry was Adventure.   You'd get interesting world layouts and other goodies.

 

My friends and I used the "on/off toggle" method constantly, never did any damage to the units.

[retrorussell]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

My favorite game to fry was Adventure.   You'd get interesting world layouts and other goodies.

 

My friends and I used the "on/off toggle" method constantly, never did any damage to the units.

I was unable to get this through Stella-- maybe I needed to try on a real Atari 2600/VCS.

 

Another trick: H. E. R. O. (1984 Activision/John Vanryzin)

 

You need to fry the game until only a single miner awaiting rescue and a spider appear in the cave (though there may be other ways to get this trick).  The timer will be ticking down.  Your character is not seen; he is stuck in a wall! (you can hear him fire the laser when you press the button)  You must wait till the timer runs out.  When he dies he will return to the beginning of level 1, and have, at least, approximately 250 lives.  Just try not to run out of bombs!

 

[bradhig1]

maze craze you get a grid of squares and can run straight to the right to win when you fry it.

[Atarian7]

How about tilting?  I accidentally did this several times with Hunchy 2, a homebrew.  I got all sorts of weird stuff  to come up including the score just running up incessantly.

 

 

[retrorussell]

4 hours ago, Atarian7 said:

How about tilting?  I accidentally did this several times with Hunchy 2, a homebrew.  I got all sorts of weird stuff  to come up including the score just running up incessantly.

 

 

Not sure what tilting is.  Can you explain it to me?

[Atarian7]

It's when you put the cartridge in a little crooked or "tilted" and turn it on thinking you have it in all the way.  It happened by accident to me trying to put

the cartridge in like normal.  I guess some cartridges are more prone to do it than others. And I guess you can do it on purpose if you try.

 

 

[retrorussell]

2 hours ago, Atarian7 said:

It's when you put the cartridge in a little crooked or "tilted" and turn it on thinking you have it in all the way.  It happened by accident to me trying to put

the cartridge in like normal.  I guess some cartridges are more prone to do it than others. And I guess you can do it on purpose if you try.

 

 

If neat/useful tricks can be created by tilting then we can add them here.

[retrorussell]

Another frying trick I discovered:

VENTURE (Coleco, 1982)

Frying may cause the screen to go mostly black with perhaps a bit of wonky graphics and sound.  If so, hit the game reset switch.  If it works, the game will be a good deal easier, at least for as long as it's playable (see later).  Some monsters-- dungeon and hallway monsters-- will be frozen in place.  And some will go through walls!  Also note that some dungeon exits will be against a wall and you will either not be able to enter that way or if you try to exit that way you'll get stuck in the wall.  Definitely worth trying though!

[retrorussell]

More frying:

VIDEO PINBALL (Atari 1981)

I tapped the "backspace" key to activate frying in Stella.  The graphics and sound will get wonky and the left flipper will not work quite right, if at all.  Still pretty amusing.

[retrorussell]

DRAGONFIRE (1982, Imagic)

Make the treasure rooms a little easier!  Fry at the title screen and then press game reset.  Things will look normal at first-- hopefully, if you did things right, when you safely cross the bridge all the treasures will be along the left wall, a bit easier to pick up.  If you die on the bridge a single beep will be heard instead of a more hyper sound effect.

 

Edited December 19, 2022 by retrorussell

[retrorussell]

DEMON ATTACK (1982, Imagic)

Frying during the attract mode may cause the game to start with weird graphics.  If so, the game may have numerous different effects-- you may only be able to shoot/move every few seconds (your ship turns yellow), you may be slower/faster, enemies may be tougher/easier, or an enemy may be a graphics scramble and be off the playfield so you can't shoot it, etc.  The best effect I found was enemies don't shoot at all!  Unfortunately, another effect was the aforementioned only being able to shoot/move every few seconds.  This may still make the game easier, but when you break up the enemies into little birds they may slam into you when you're immobile.

 

[Raiu]

7 hours ago, retrorussell said:

you may only be able to shoot/move every few seconds (your ship turns yellow)

Ah, this is from the game variations where two players alternate controlling the ship.  You can swap controllers when the ship's color changes to keep control, though that's awkward.

[retrorussell]

More frying:

PITFALL II: THE LOST CAVERNS (1984 Activision/David Crane)

 

This one is very helpful and perhaps one of the more likely to work.  Frying at the opening screen will likely cause a big old jumble of funky graphics and possibly warped music.  Move to the right after you see the jumbled mess and you will likely either drop down or run right to the next screen-- hopefully the screen changes to normal.  Then go back left.  Woah-- there's Quickclaw the mountain lion a couple floors above!  This is a nice shortcut to get him and the rat or whatever it is to the right.  You may now just have to get Rhonda and the diamond ring to beat the game.

[+Stephen]

Space Invaders - some weird graphics glitches and the UFO keeps scrolling.  Does holding down reset while powering on count?  It gives you double shots.  This will of course only work for the 1st game played, and always has to be game variation 1.

[retrorussell]

On 12/26/2022 at 1:32 PM, Stephen said:

Space Invaders - some weird graphics glitches and the UFO keeps scrolling.  Does holding down reset while powering on count?  It gives you double shots.  This will of course only work for the 1st game played, and always has to be game variation 1.

I've definitely heard of the double-shot trick.  VERY useful.  I don't consider that "frying" however.

 

Another frying trick:

MOUSE TRAP

 

Not really useful since you can't finish a screen.  But it is interesting.  Frying at the start of a game (which oddly enough begins immediately after you power on the console) until a death seems to have happened (the "mreow" sound of a cat killing your mouse) seems to remove a lot of the cheese pieces in the maze.  The walls in the center section seem to be invisible.  Also, the cats may not be able to move!  Unfortunately even when you clear all the cheese pieces, the screen can't be beaten.  And it's not like there's invisible cheese you can eat-- the screen just can't be completed.  Oh well, kind of interesting.

[retrorussell]

Another weirdo frying trick:

HANGMAN

 

Frying after powering on till you see a weird jumble of pixels instead of a letter will cause the computer to make up a nonsense word for you to uncover.  The color cycling that some Atari 2600 games do when a game isn't played or after a game is over happens during your game in this instance.

[retrorussell]

GOLF

 

Frying after powering up the system can start a game with weird alterations to the course (odd graphics/colors).  You may not be able to see your ball or the green/hole!  You might not be able to move in certain directions.  Maybe you'll be able to finish a hole, more likely not.

 

 

[retrorussell]

DODGE 'EM

 

Frying after the game powers on tends to make the score digits look funky.  However, it also tends to give you tons of extra lives.  Too bad you can't really see the score correctly.  BTW, it flips over at 1,000.

[retrorussell]

MARIO BROS.

 

Fry and then press the action button to start a game.  You may begin on the bonus stage!  Some of the floors may be invisible.  The game will be normal after the stage ends, up until the point where no enemies appear (the fireball will still fly around).

[retrorussell]

STAMPEDE

 

You can't really tell by the pic.. but if you start a game and have some cattle on the screen, then fry slightly you may be able to make the cattle move SUPER SLOW, and the screen scrolls slowly likewise.  You move at regular speed.  It's painfully slow this way-- though the action speeds up a little bit here and there.  Good start to get you some points in this rather difficult (IMHO) game.  A difficult trick to get to work properly.

[retrorussell]

^ This trick may allow you only one miss.

[retrorussell]

BERZERK

If you fry after you've started a game (you can simply press the action button to start one), you can make a room with INVISIBLE WALLS!  Way, way harder to play this way!  The score/lives counter gets all funky too.

[retrorussell]

BOXING

Frying before starting a game may start a game with weird graphics, or the CPU boxer will not punch back (or both)!  In the latter case simply move up to him, then move slightly up and down while punching repeatedly and he'll keep moving into the punch.  Easy KO!

[retrorussell]

CENTIPEDE

 

Frying after you start a game (frying beforehand just wiggles the centipede at the main screen back and forth faster) can produce some interesting effects.  Most notably, your cannon appearing in the center of the screen (!), less centipede parts to start with, or maybe an odd score to begin with.  It may also give you just one life to start (or kill your cannon right away).