2600 Cheater's Club

[Living Room Arcade]

 

Okay, Atari 2600 cheaters, where you at?

 

If you have a high score that you got by CHEATING, pls share.

 

[Living Room Arcade]

I'll go first. 

 

Okay, Midnight Magic.  Was having a little trouble getting past the first table.

 

So in Stella, I set the emulation speed to 50%.  Wow, that makes is a lot easier!

Set difficulty to B.  The left and right kickers and the center post appear.  That helps a lot, too!

In game, if I knocked down one of the five targets on top of the screen, I hit F9 to save game state.

If the ball drained, I hit F11 to restore game state.

Basically, it's like having infinite lives.  Play forever!

 

I rolled it over at 1,000,000 and saw the screen flashing

 and stopped at 1,815,990.  

That was fun!  I enjoyed that.  I was just curious about the game play and what would happen

if you kept going.  

 

Doing this, I have tremendous respect for people in the High Score Club who do this legitimately.

Wow!  

 

Did anybody else cheat on any 2600 games lately? 

Edited September 15, 2023 by Living Room Arcade

[BassGuitari]

I love me some cheese! 🧀

 

It's been a while but IIRC Squeeze Box has a variation where the wall only closes in on one side, and you can cheese the game by hanging out near the edge of the screen and machine gunning the walls (and running up your score!) as they come onscreen. From that position you should be able to maneuver and shoot faster than the wall can come in, so you can basically play forever.

 

I tried frying H.E.R.O. once and IIRC it gave me LOTS of lives. (Probably 255 if I had to guess.)

 

Space Invaders has the double-shot trick, of course, but I think I generally prefer to play without it. 

 

I always use the trick in Defender where Landers won't pick up Humanoids if you're carrying one. I don't know if I'd really call that cheese, though, since even the game manual describes it as a playing strategy.

[CapitanClassic]

I performed the infamous Pole Vault cheat In Decathlon. I think I remember sending in a photo to Activision, I never received a patch though.

 

 

[4ever2600]

I used frying technique many a times to get double shots on Space Invaders.

[JasperAK]

Barnstormer bouncing off the barn. Eventually earned the patch legit, but yeah, Barn bouncing in Barnstormer.

[Living Room Arcade]

Nice tricks, guys.  Hey, I just tried the frying trick shift+backspace on Space Invaders on Stella just for the heck of it and - it worked!  Double shots!!  

Edited September 16, 2023 by Living Room Arcade

[NE146]

Emulators + Save States =

[Living Room Arcade]

2 hours ago, NE146 said:

Emulators + Save States =

@NE146 👍 Nice 😄 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Living Room Arcade

[Wickeycolumbus]

I still remember this from HSC in 2008, where I drove out of bounds in Indy 500 to get a score of 15.

 

 

[Living Room Arcade]

Motocross Racer (Atari, 1990)

Had never played this GREAT motorcycle racer for Atari 2600 before.

Was having some trouble keeping the pace on BB novice.

So I reduced the emulation speed in Stella to 50% and pressed F9 and F11 to save and load game states to have infinite lives.

Went from Desert Scramble to Hill Climb to Beach Sprint, finishing all in 3 minutes, 25.48 seconds.  

 

What a great game!  Great graphics.  Lots of variety.  Love the Hill Climb and the Beach Sprint portions, especially.

I think my complaint is that toward the end of the Beach Sprint, your bike moves too far to the right side of the screen, 

giving you too little time to react.  

 

Why did I cheat?  I guess I just wanted to try all three races.  Was fun.  Glad I did.  

I'll have to try for an honest race time one of these days.  

 

Anybody else out there cheat a game lately?  

Edited October 2, 2023 by Living Room Arcade

[Lord Thag]

Here's an OG tip for Moonsweeper from back in the day that I still use regularly when I play it:

 

You get a free life every 10k points. The trick is to hit and just pass 10,000 points, and then deploy your shield in the space screen, which decreases your score, and let it run back to just under 10k again. Shoot stuff. You'll get another free life. It's not infinite, but you can easily nab 6 ships or so doing this and vastly increase your best scores doing so. 

[Living Room Arcade]

Ninjish Guy in Low-Res World by VHZC Games

I just pressed F9 at the start of every level and if I died, I hit F11 to try again.

Why did I cheat?  I guess I just wanted to explore all the different levels and see what they look like.

This game is really neat!  One of the few Atari 2600 games I've seen with BOSSES to fight!  

Maybe some day, I'll try for an honest score with no cheating.

[Living Room Arcade]

Gyruss

 

Game 1, difficulty B, auto fire = 4 Hz

Cheating method: F9/F11 (save state/restore state) infinite lives

Arriving at the 2nd Saturn

Arriving at the 2nd Mars

I quit playing at 355,000 with 3 warps to go to the second Earth with two lives remaining.  

I recently played honestly and scored 89,000.  

Why did I cheat?  I died on the way to Mars when I played honestly.  I guess I just wanted to see Mars and Earth and what happens after that, so I cheated in order to see it.  

 

This game is immersive!  The music is some of the best I think I've ever heard on Atari 2600.  You don't hear the sound of your guns firing but somehow that doesn't diminish the experience of playing because the music is so good and it draws you in.  It would add to your experience if you're familiar with the arcade version of Gyruss, so you understand you have 2 warps to Uranus, then 1 warp to Uranus, then the Uranus bonus stage, then 3 warps to Saturn, etc.  Reading the manual is also advised to make sure you understand what's going on in the game.  But once you know what you're doing, this game is very immersive.  I mean, the longer you play, the more that the great gameplay and the great music draw you in!  After reaching Earth, the game starts over at the beginning at a higher level of difficulty.  What a great arcade port of Gyruss for the Atari 2600 this is!  Highly recommended if you like this type of space shooter game.  

 

BTW, guys, do you consider using auto fire to be cheating?  

Edited January 16 by Living Room Arcade

[Living Room Arcade]

Cheaters, where you at?

 

So in the Kaboom! manual, at the end, a special message from programmer Larry Kaplan.

In it, he writes, 

Quote

"If you hit the 10,000 point level, that really impresses the "Mad Bomber," and he'll show his appreciation.  Watch for it."

Roll up my sleeves.  Put on my game face.  It's cheatin' time.  Let's go!  

 

Big Bucket Kaboom! (hack)  Rom Forum

Game 1, difficulty switches on B

Every 1000 pts, it plays a tune.  

Keep going!  We gotta see what happens when you get to 10,000, as Larry Kaplan said.

Getting faster!  Hitting F9 (save state) each level just in case I die.  

Too fast!  Gotta slow it down more.

More.  More.  All the way down!

10,000 points!  There, I did it!

Here's what I saw

And here's a close up of the Mad Bomber's face

He just can't believe you got 10,000 points!

So cool!

Edited January 31 by Living Room Arcade

[Living Room Arcade]

You know what?  I have yet to score a perfect 300 in Strike Zone Bowling.

Let's fix that!

 

Strike Zone Bowling by E. A. Smith Thread

Without cheating, I can score about 170.  

Let's bowl a perfect game.  

1 player, difficulty B.

F9 (save state) if I get a strike, F11 (load previous state) if I don't get a strike.

 

Using the Dec. 31, 2023 version of the ROM.

He said that he changed the control scheme with the yellow/green bars a little.    

That's cool.  I think I get it.  No problem.  Continue.

 

Okay, after 3 strikes, I'M IN THE ZONE, baby!  I love that!

Keep going!  Strikes need a LOT of curve on the ball.

No problem.  I love this game!

Tenth frame!  Just need 2 more strikes!

290!  One more strike...

300!  I get a trophy!  How 'bout that?!

So, there you have it, folks.  If you score a perfect 300 in Strike Zone Bowling, you will get a trophy like this!

How cool is that?!

Edited February 3 by Living Room Arcade

[Machine]

On 9/15/2023 at 5:36 PM, 4ever2600 said:

I used frying technique many a times to get double shots on Space Invaders.

If I remember correctly, you can just hold down reset when you power on. No need to fry.

I also hold the world record in dragster, crushing Todd Roger's score. I got the patch to prove it!

[Radio F Software]

I don't know how I discovered frying on my own as a kid but somehow I did. Anyways I cooked Maze Craze and found out that doing so bypasses the game's flashing color boot screen (where it's generating the maze) and instead starts up with an empty grid that you can just walk right out of.

[Living Room Arcade]

  

On 2/4/2024 at 4:40 PM, Machine said:

If I remember correctly, you can just hold down reset when you power on. No need to fry.  

Yes, I think so.  And I didn't know this, I just found out today that there's a way to get the double shots in Stella.  

Edited February 8 by Living Room Arcade

[Living Room Arcade]

On 2/5/2024 at 2:18 AM, Radio F Software said:

I don't know how I discovered frying on my own as a kid but somehow I did. Anyways I cooked Maze Craze and found out that doing so bypasses the game's flashing color boot screen (where it's generating the maze) and instead starts up with an empty grid that you can just walk right out of.

Nice!