Berry Fun! (New 2600 home brew) [Complete]

Farmer McDonald is trying out the new Accu-Pick 2600, the latest in automated strawberry pickers. It can detect how many ripe berries are available for picking and move to them, but the machine's 8-bit processor doesn't have enough clock cycles left over to actually pick them. So he's leaving it up to you to pick his crop! Pick the ripe berries, but leave the unripe and rotten berries alone. And be quick about it! Farmer McDonald will grow more impatient with each row, giving you less time to pick but offering more money per pick. Make as much money as you can before you either run out of extra chances (either due to berries that are not ripe or not making a pick when you need to) or complete all of the available rows. Either 1 person can play by themselves, or 2 players can play at the same time to pick the yummy strawberries together!

Farming has never been so fun! You might even say it is now ... Berry Fun!

Berry Fun! is my latest home brew project for the Atari 2600 (the first being ElectroBall). This is an 8K (F8 bankswitch) game programmed in 6502 assembly. I have a few projects in various stages of early development, including one with me messing about with changing the missile sprite over a few scan lines to make it "sprite-ish" looking. After starting to read Oscar Toledo G's book "Programming Games for Atari 2600", some of the game examples in the book using non-sprites to make sprite-ish results gave me some further inspiration to make it into a fully featured game.

In my practice program, the missile object looked a bit like a target reticle, so this would point towards the game being some kind of "shooter". But what kind? Then I thought of the NES game "Hogan's Alley" and how the way I played it was to hold the light gun up to the screen to shoot the targets (or avoid the "don't shoot" targets) at point blank range. OK, so the game will be a "shoot some things, don't shoot other things" type of game, with some kind of time limit on making those decisions. As to what objects to shoot and what to avoid, I was inspired by KevKelly's sequence of "work games" - so why not make the game about picking fruit? After all, everyone loves games about food! Based on my limited artistic ability, I decided to make the focal point about strawberries. Pick the ripe strawberries, but avoid the unripe or rotten berries.

One of the advantages of the Atari 2600 hardware capabilities is its color palette and it's ability to display copies of the same sprite on the same scan line. So I used those to have the game feature a 9x9 grid of selectable objects. But I would need to learn how to properly re-use the same sprite object in a different X-position on a different scan line. Fortunately I was able to learn how it was done by looking at some of Dennis Debro's excellent annotated source codes of classic 2600 games (Several of them are here, by Dennis and several other contributors). I also tried my hand at the "HMOVE every line" to remove the blank repositioning lines at the left side of the screen (and the weird timing related issues if you issue sta HMCLR too early), as well as the Yar's Revenge-esque tactic of using actual source code as data values for the playfield, allowing the "dirt" background to have some additional texture (and to change the dirt pattern between locations!)

I originally strived to make this a 4K game, but despite my continued gains in code efficiency and space savings it was not to be. So I expanded it into an 8K game and added a lot of "embellishments". I have about 1K left over for possible future work or added "flair". Everything can be controlled by a joystick, making it "Couch Compliant" (but the select switch can be used to go back to the main menu when playing a game, select game options when at the title menu, and the reset switch can be used to start the game from the title screen or re-start the game during game play).

I've made both a NTSC and PAL60 version - I am in NTSC land and simulated the PAL60 colors via Stella - hopefully the PAL60 colors look sufficiently lifelike!

I've attached instructions, but the rules are pretty simple. Move the joystick around to select 1 of 9 locations (not moving the joystick at all puts the target reticle in the center). Then press the fire button to pick the current location. If you pick a ripe strawberry, you get paid for the pick. If you pick a rotten or unripe strawberry, you lose an extra chance. On later levels if you fail to make a pick at all during your time limit you also lose an extra chance. Later levels also cut the amount you make per pick if over half the current time for the location has elapsed. Make a mistake with no extra chances left and it is game over. As you progress through each round, the value per pick goes up but the time per location to pick decreases. By row 12 it gets really hectic. So far my best score is $45.76 (see snapshot for proof you can get to the end. ). The best earnings you can get in "Play" mode is 50 cents, and the best theoretical earnings you can get in "Work" mode is $99.99.

image.png.cf7270b8bae2fc85e7dbff3730642381.png

A second player can jump in at any time with a second joystick and two players can play at the same time, contributing towards a common score. There is a "play" mode which has the longest available time to pick, only ripe strawberries for picking and no penalty for not making a pick. Great for practicing or just to chill. The regular game is "work" mode where the chance to make money is significantly greater, but you are penalized for mistakes and the game can end early. The game also keeps track of the high score during the current play session.

I've tested the game on Stella, PlusCart, the javatari.org web emulator and via harmony cart on my Atari 7800 (where my high score screenshot comes from). The last thing I struggled with was making sure I had enough time in the Overscan and Vertical Blank sections for all of the possible game logic combinations.

The game officially supports SaveKey/AtariVox+ high score saving and can upload your highscore with a PlusCart enabled system (either through Stella emulator or with a PlusCart).

Youtube video of game in action:

December 26, 2023 update:

Just to make sure it doesn't get lost in the thread, if you boot up your copy of Berry Fun!, either through an emulator or a live cart with a SaveKey, some people may see their high score that pops up be one that is messed up like in the screen shot below. I strongly suspect this might happen to people who have played the game when it was in Beta when I had the SaveKey address in a temporary location (it was only later on in development that I got a proper assigned address). Not sure how it exactly happens, just that to get that graphic under the "Best" score to display requires a dollar value higher than is actually possible. I've gone in with a SaveKey editor and verified the high score is being read from and written to the properly assigned location with this release.

This is an example of a messed up "Best" score:

Fortunately, there is a straightforward fix for this. If you've purchased this on physical cart and see this issue, here is how you fix it:

1. With the SaveKey not plugged in, turn on the Berry Fun! game and get to the above title screen. The "Best" score should now read $0.00 since no SaveKey was plugged in.

2. Plug in the SaveKey at this time (when the game is on the title screen) on the right controller port.

3. Play a game (on either work or play mode) to completion where you pick at least 1 ripe berry to get a non-zero score. In this case, completion means you get the "End Day" screen, then press fire which will bring you back to the Title Screen. The high score is updated on the SaveKey during the transition between the "End Day" screen and the Title Screen. The "Best" score should now be whatever your last game was. This is the critical step - you need to be sure to get back to the title screen for the "Best" score to be properly updated.

4. To verify it worked, power off the system and power back on the system with Berry Fun! plugged in as well as the SaveKey plugged into the right controller port. On the title screen the "Best" score should now be the score of your last game rather than the strange high score.

If you are playing this on Stella and see the same behavior, delete the SaveKey profile for this particular game and it should be reset to $0.00.

Edited December 26, 2023 by littaum
Updated for tech support on possible wonky high score

+Philsan · March 26, 2023

Very nice, it reminds me wack-a-mole games.

Colors on my PAL machine are like Stella emulator.

Image is not centered, like your photo.

When I died at row 06, screen started rolling in black and white.

Without doing anything, after 15 seconds color returned, for few seconds screen moved a little bit to the left and to the right and then returned normal.

LatchKeyKid · March 27, 2023

It may seem like an odd comment but I like the background/playfield. What made you decide on such an abstract pattern? Is it always repeating or does it change? I'll be trying it out tomorrow.

+littaum · March 27, 2023

14 hours ago, LatchKeyKid said:

It may seem like an odd comment but I like the background/playfield. What made you decide on such an abstract pattern? Is it always repeating or does it change? I'll be trying it out tomorrow.

It was the source code that decided on the actual background/playfield texture. I essentially feed the PF0/PF1/PF2 source code "gibberish" to populate the playfield, taking care to randomize the positioning of the gibberish after each movement. Howard Scott Warshaw talked about this technique in his book for making the shimmering field in Yars' Revenge. I always thought it would be a good technique for making a generalized textured background.

In the source code, variable Temp1 contains a random number between 0 and 63. I then load the memory address of one of my source code locations, add the random number to it and store the end result in an array. When I need to randomize the appearance, I just generate a new random number and assign it to Temp1.

lda <#Main+#40

clc

adc Temp1

sta PF2Array

lda >#Main

sta PF2Array+1

+littaum · March 29, 2023

On 3/26/2023 at 11:43 AM, Philsan said:

Very nice, it reminds me wack-a-mole games.

[Snip]

When I died at row 06, screen started rolling in black and white.

Without doing anything, after 15 seconds color returned, for few seconds screen moved a little bit to the left and to the right and then returned normal.

Thank you for the feedback and additional testing - Beta 2 is now posted in the first message with improvements to stability (shuffled some things around from the Vertical Blank to the OverScan where I still had some extra clock cycles). I also slightly darkened the dirt color in PAL60 to more closely match what I see on NTSC. In addition, I also did some small rebalancing of the early levels so that they go slightly quicker and in the process managed to have the theoretical best score max out the counter.

You are also correct that there's a strong Whac-A-Mole vibe to the game - something I did not pick up on when designing it.

Arenafoot · March 31, 2023

On 3/29/2023 at 10:34 AM, littaum said:

Thank you for the feedback and additional testing - Beta 2 is now posted in the first message with improvements to stability (shuffled some things around from the Vertical Blank to the OverScan where I still had some extra clock cycles).

And just in time for our local Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival in mid-April!!!! https://www.lastrawberryfestival.com/

+ZeroPage Homebrew · April 3, 2023

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing Berry Fun! on tomorrow's ZPH stream LIVE on Twitch, hope you can join us!

Mon Apr 3, 2023 | LIVE @ 6PM PT | 9PM ET | 1AM GMT

WATCH LIVE: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/
WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

Games:

Space Taxi (2023 WIP | 2600) by Jeff Haber @Just Jeff
Berry Fun! (2023 WIP | 2600) by Mike Littau @littaum
Beyond Parsec (2023 WIP | 2600) by Grocer Games / Kevin Kelley @KevKelley
Carrot Kingdom (2021 | 2600) by Joseph Nesbella @Jinroh

(WATCH AT 1080P60 FOR BEST QUALITY)

+SpiceWare · April 4, 2023

in case you have the space, I have some keyboard routines here:

Quote

Here's where I figured out how to read the joystick and the keypad. Each key on the keypad will change the background color, while the directions on the joystick will change the playfield color(the narrow bars in the screen shot).

Thomas Jentzsch · April 4, 2023

Another idea for a variation: Instead of always going for the ripe berries, the player has to go for the berry type of the one displayed in the center.

+littaum · April 4, 2023

Thanks to ZPH for playing the game on their stream - based on the gameplay I'm pretty happy with the rate of difficulty progression. Not surprising that you ran into stability issues, I have not quite ironed out all possible pathways of the functions during Vertical Blank/Overscan. But I did recently learn you can insert a break in stella if your scanlines exceed your desired rate (breakif _scan>#262) which is helping figuring out where they come from - and I'm storing the vertical blank and overscan time remaining (lda INTIM -> sta testvar) before the final wait loop so I can get an idea of how much idle time I have remaining at various points in the game.

@SpiceWare thanks for the sample code on keypad controls - since this is also a learning exercise for me I'll at least come up with a variation where keypad controls are used, even if it is an offshoot version. And if I can figure out how to auto-detect they keypad (or have the player press a specific keypad button to be able to notify the program that a keypad is plugged in) then perhaps both controllers can be supported. But I think Tap-A-Mole is the grand shining example of this type of game with keypad controls.

@Thomas Jentzsch I have been thinking about possible "bonus rounds" and that sounds like an interesting idea.

Other things I plan on doing:

1. Make sure it is a stable 262 lines at all times.

2. Add in SaveKey support. I've actually done that already thanks to past postings on the subject, but I am using "Scratchpad" space at the moment for testing. I've put in a request to reserve some space (even though I only need 2 bytes!)

3. Try to have the ripe/unrotten berries appear 3 in a row some times. At present it is limited to 1 or 2 each time.

+littaum · April 9, 2023

I've updated the ROM with beta 3 versions and instructions. I am hoping I've slayed the instability beast this time. I've been logging the INTIM time in vertical blank and overscan and store the lowest value seen in each across the various planning and playing phases. So far the lowest the vertical blank INTIM value goes is 2 (64 clock intervals) and the lowest the overscan INTIM value goes is 1 (64 clock intervals). I typically have a lot more cycles left but due to various routines taking various amounts of time depending on how the various berries are distributed on the screen it can change wildly. When I used up more clock cycles in one of these two phases than allotted that is when the screen rolls happened. Using debugging feature breakif _scan>#262 in Stella has also helped see issues, and I had a debug-only stress test mode where I disable the loss of extra chances (so that it really is impossible to end the game early) but make the joystick input random so the game played over and over, and with 2 hours of Stella in turbo mode I did not see the scan lines exceed 262 once. Lots of rebalancing between vertical blank and overscan in this version, as well as a few function optimizations.

Also included in this beta 3 version:

* "Technically" supported the SaveKey. I read from an attached SaveKey from scratchpad ($3000 address, marked in the list as for test use) and write to the same location after a high score (the screen is blank for 1 frame between the "End of Day" screen and title screen), but the actual variable in the game written is a temporary variable. This is a long winded explanation for it tests out the read and save functions in SaveKey, but doesn't actually save the high score yet. Once my request for a SaveKey address is answered and once I get the game to a "completed" state I will change the values so that the high score is actually saved. If you have a SaveKey and can test it, that would be great - it doesn't actually save the high score yet, but at the moment I'm just looking to make sure it doesn't freak out at the title screen or end of day screen when you have it plugged in. I tried it with my AtariVox on my Atari 7800 where I actually saved the high score and did not see any issues.

* There are now some opportunities where the rotten/unripe berries will appear 3 in a row. Previously it was limited to 1 or 2. Most people probably did not see that, but I did, and it was a nice to have for me.

* The distribution of berries should be a lot more randomized from the start.

If you've played the game before, hopefully the main thing you see is that it doesn't roll anymore. If you do see screen rolls or other instability, please let me know!

I have a little less than 100 bytes in bank 0 and about 800 bytes in bank 1. At this point it's not so much ROM space as it is CPU space to do things in a given frame. I did look at the keypad code from the sample program, and the having to sleep for 1908 total cycles to read the keypad overall is .. daunting. I have not given up on the idea of having a keypad mode, but it would likely take a lot more optimization (or some distribution of the reads throughout frame? Admittedly I have not spent a lot of study time on mastering the keypad programming). Still also thinking about possible bonus rounds or other modes of play. At least now with my debug/stress test compiler options I have an easier way of testing to see if my changes cause screen rolls.

My plan is to have this game "complete" by the end of the year, and am looking into the "stretch goals" of keypad support and bonus rounds.

+littaum · May 21, 2023

Hi all!

I have updated my first post with my latest beta version of Berry Fun! (beta 4). I'm really leaning into the "high score" aspect, as this version adds official SaveKey/AtariVox+ support for saving of high scores, and the game will be available on the PlusCart(+) when it is uploaded to the ROMs section (thanks to @Albert for reserving me a memory slot for SaveKey, and a big thanks to @Al_Nafuur for helping me figure out how to add the pointer reference to the PlusCart and setting things up on the PlusROM website (my game's leaderboard is here -- it is even formatted as a cash leaderboard!). Thanks to ZPH for letting me use their cover art from their stream for the PlusROM image. For posterity's sake, this is how I set up the pointer to the PlusROM in my 8K/F8 bankswitching scheme (Bank 0 was not touched, and I only had to modify the very end of my code in Bank 1 to accommodate it - the last section is literally the last parts of my code):

;===============================================================================

; BANK 0

;===============================================================================

SEG Code

ORG $8000

RORG $1000

;ending vectors for bank 0

ORG $8ff8

RORG $1ff8

ds 4, 0

.word $1000 ; RESET

.word 0 ; BRK

;===============================================================================

; BANK 1

;===============================================================================

SEG Code

ORG $9000

RORG $3000

PlusROM_API:

.byte "a", 0, "h.firmaplus.de", 0

;protect PlusROM hotspots

ORG $9ff0

RORG $3ff0

.byte 0,0,0,$ff ; Set ReceivedBufferSize to initial $ff

; At startup on a device with PlusROM support

; "lda ReceivedBufferSize" will read $00

; a device without support will read the value in ROM $ff

;ending vectors

ORG $9ff4 ;was $9ff8

RORG $3ff4 ;was $3ff8

ds 6, 0 ;was ds 4, 0

.word (PlusROM_API - $2000 + $1000) ; NMI (PlusROM API offset from ROM-start + $1000)

.word $3000 ; RESET

.word 0 ; BRK

I've decided not to try and include keypad support for this game, mainly for clock cycle timing reasons. A lot of the game would be able to handle the delays needed to read each part of the keypad, but some of them (particular in transitions and "next patch of berries" setup) would not. In some cases by the time I get to the end of the frame I'm down to 1 or 2 idle scan lines left, and that's simply not enough. I'd have to come up with a system to stop reading in the keypad in this case, which could lead to the player wondering why the keypad isn't always responsive (perhaps it's the OCD part of me, but I like being able to move the target reticule around at all points of the game). And even then I'm not sure I could catch all corner cases to prevent screen rolls due to going over my cycle budget. I do have an idea for a keypad-based game that isn't quite so computation heavy so the sample code will still come into play.

I also thought about bonus rounds or mixing up what you pick, but am having trouble coming up with something that fits into the "story" of the game. In my headcanon for this game, it could have conceivably been something commissioned by a farmer's association back in 1983 as a way to try to make toiling in the hot sun picking berries appealing to teenagers hooked on the video game "fad". After all, there was also a video game about Dog Food! I also wanted a game somewhat based on reality. From this guide, picking unripe strawberries is no good, because they will not ripen after being picked. You always want to pick them when they are bright red and ripe. For diseased or blemished strawberries, you are indeed supposed to prune them off, but definitely not supposed to pick ripe and rotten berries at the same time - putting them into the same batch could ruin them all and during the game the implication is anything you pick goes in the same location (which is why picking unripe or rotten berries is a bad idea!). So any sort of bonus round would have to deal with pruning rotten berries, and that would be kind of a icky end to the game. After all, we're supposed to be tricking 1983 teenagers into thinking toiling in the hot sun could be fun. One could change the bonus round or the entire game to be about picking other objects, but then it's no longer a game about picking fruit but of cleaning up some farmer's dirt field of randomly strewn objects. And that's certainly not going to trick 1983 teenagers into working the fields.

Please give it a try and let me know if you find any bugs or screen jumps or issues with saving of high scores or if you have issues getting your high scores sent to the PlusCart leaderboard. Once I can confirm that no more bugs or screen rolls exist, I'll mark it as complete later this year. I'll also be providing the "complete" version for the PlusROM website.

+littaum · June 15, 2023

Hi all!

After a few small additional changes (Introduced a splash screen to fill up the remainder of the 8K ROM, added a special highlight to the high score on the title screen in case you earn at least $42) and more testing (no screen rolls found, no additional reports of bugs) I am marking my game as "complete". Please enjoy this game however you play your Atari 2600 games (emulators, PlusCart, harmony cart, Argon and however else!). Download links are in the first post. This version is also already available in the PlusStore for PlusCart users - thanks @Al_Nafuur for updating the ROM on there.

As of this writing, the current high score on the PlusROM leaderboard is $43.66, and my personal best during development is $45.76. The "achievement" score I've assigned for this game is $42 (the answer to life, the universe and everything!) - a hypothetical high score patch would be earned at this point. How does one get such a score? You need to ride the edge of picking as many ripe berries as possible at each row without making too many mistakes. You are in for a very good run if you reach row 10 with 5-6 extra chances remaining. I've found having a high amount of extra chances in reserve gives me some peace of mind that a bad pick won't be my last. I find if I only have 1 or 2 extra chances left I am much more conservative in my picking, which will hurt your high score chances.

In Oregon we are right in the heart of strawberry picking season (mid-May to early July), and with any luck it will be similar in your neck of the woods. Now is the time to enjoy some fresh berries, especially ones you get via U-Pick! Fortunately in real life you have much more time to pick berries than you do in my game.

+littaum · June 17, 2023

BTW - if for some reason anyone still finds bugs or issues, please let me know. It is "complete" but am always down to fix bugs. I saw this from a facebook post in the "Atari 2600 Homebrew Games" group, where somehow the high score is garbled like below - still trying to determine how that happened and on what kind of setup (and if it is "fixed" once you play it) - the only way I could reproduce this is if I modify the high score value to give a score much higher than the maximum of $99.99, which should be theoretically impossible. I did test on a live Atari 7800 with harmony cart (with and without savekey plugged in), through the plus cart, the Argon app, Stella, and javatari and did not see this.

EDIT: Was about to find out how the below happened - it was run in Stella, and it looks like it had to do with the SaveKey file. I am speculating because I had used a "scratchpad" address for the SaveKey high score before moving it to the assigned SaveKey address, scores saved using the old address might be misinterpreted on loadup. But for future reference if you start up the game in Stella and have something weird show up on the high score like the below, simply reset the SaveKey setting for the game, and it will go back to $0.00 and behave normally.

May be an image of text

+littaum · June 29, 2023

I submitted Berry Fun! to the Homebrew Games Summer Showcase 2023 - the author did a good job highlighting the gameplay. Amazing what some editing can do. Fellow Atari 2600 homebrew Xanthiom 2600 was also highlighted, check it out at the 12:31 mark.

Albert · August 8, 2023

Here's a sneak peak at the Berry Fun! box, created by Atariboy2600 (John Calcano):

Berry Fun! will be released in October at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, and then made available in the AtariAge Store in November.

..Al

+ZeroPage Homebrew · August 8, 2023

4 hours ago, Albert said:

Here's a sneak peak at the Berry Fun! box, created by Atariboy2600 (John Calcano):

Love the super colourful artwork by @Atariboy2600! I also spy the 'Couch Compliant' logo!!! Is this the first box revealed to feature the logo?

- James

Albert · August 8, 2023

Just now, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

Super colourful artwork! I also spy the 'Couch Compliant' logo!!! Is this the first box revealed to feature the logo?

The first, but not the last!

..Al

+ZeroPage Homebrew · August 8, 2023

5 minutes ago, Albert said:

The first, but not the last!

Grid... electricity... I'm going to have to go with Electroball!

- James

Albert · August 8, 2023

1 minute ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

Grid... electricity... I'm going to have to go with Electroball!

That's very brave of you.

..Al

Atariboy2600 · August 8, 2023

😅

Atariboy2600 · August 19, 2023

Also help on drawing the manual clip art just in case.

+littaum · October 21, 2023

A few pictures from PRGE 2023...similar in experience to my other game ElectroBall, Berry Fun! had its physical release debut at PRGE 2023. And I even got to meet the amazing & talented John Calcano (@Atariboy2600) who did the artwork for the game box and manual (and Tony Morse helped finalize the manual text - my advanced preview copy of the manual looked really nice!). One thing people should know is Al has an excellent grasp of grammar. We went through several iterations of the text in the manual and back of the box for both of my games, and because of that were much more polished because of it. For the Berry Fun! demo, the joystick had a bit of give to it and I was viewing the game at an angle so my score/earnings was not quite up to par. But it was still quite fun playing it at PRGE.

The game was across from one of the 2600+ systems, and the opening "Toy Piano jingle" got a cameo in the ZPH live stream at the 1:12:03 mark:

+ZeroPage Homebrew · December 12, 2023

ZeroPage Homebrew presents...

Sun Dec 17, 2023 @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT
WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

On Sunday December 17, 2023 ZeroPage Homebrew will be interviewing the developers of every single new physical release coming to the AtariAge store! Join us LIVE on Twitch while we unbox all the new Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar and Lynx games and talk with the incredibly talented Atari community members about their games! Get your questions ready for the devs and following along in the Twitch chat as we pop in each of the 22 new releases into our Atari consoles!

NEW GAME RELEASES

Atari 2600: Berry Fun!, Bot&Tom, Caramujo, ElectroBall, Game of the Bear 2 Much To Bear, Immunity!, Penult, Quantum Tunnel, Robot Zed

Atari 5200: Scorch

Atari 7800: A.R.T.I., Death Merchant, E.X.O., Harpy's Curse, Millie and Molly, Oozy the Goo - Gaiden, Plumb Luck DX

Atari Jaguar: Defender of the Crown, Novagen Volume 1, Rocket Ranger
Atari Lynx: Growing Ties Deluxe, Odynexus

+littaum · December 20, 2023

Thanks so much for @ZeroPage Homebrew for having me on Atari Age 2023! It was great fun. As a developer you always want everything to be bug free, so imagine my chagrin when I saw ZPH boot up Berry Fun! to see that the high score that popped up was messed up - I had seen this as well (with the exact sample messed up value) on a post by @Philsan when he announced the public version had been completed earlier this year. That was on a Stella emulator and was solved by deleting the SaveKey entry for it to reset it to $0.00. At first I though it was a fluke, but now I strongly suspect this might happen to people who have played the game when it was in Beta when I had the SaveKey address in a temporary location (it was only later on in development that I got a proper assigned address). Not sure how it exactly happens, just that to get that graphic under the "Best" score to display requires a dollar value higher than is actually possible. I've gone in with a SaveKey editor and verified the high score is being read from and written to the properly assigned location with this release.

This is an example of a messed up "Best" score:

image.png.acb5f322fa74fa7d0c2a7b5169fb4db6.png

Fortunately, there is a straightforward fix for this which James was gracious enough to test out. If you've purchased this on physical cart and see this issue, here is how you fix it:

1. With the SaveKey not plugged in, turn on the Berry Fun! game and get to the above title screen. The "Best" score should now read $0.00 since no SaveKey was plugged in.

2. Plug in the SaveKey at this time (when the game is on the title screen) on the right controller port.

3. Play a game (on either work or play mode) to completion where you pick at least 1 ripe berry to get a non-zero score. In this case, completion means you get the "End Day" screen, then press fire which will bring you back to the Title Screen. The high score is updated on the SaveKey during the transition between the "End Day" screen and the Title Screen. The "Best" score should now be whatever your last game was. This is the critical step - you need to be sure to get back to the title screen for the "Best" score to be properly updated.

4. To verify it worked, power off the system and power back on the system with Berry Fun! plugged in as well as the SaveKey plugged into the right controller port. On the title screen the "Best" score should now be the score of your last game rather than the strange high score.

If you are playing this on Stella and see the same behavior, delete the SaveKey profile for this particular game and it should be reset to $0.00.

Berry Fun! (New 2600 home brew) [Complete]

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