DanBoris Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 I am sure someone has done this before, but I haven't seen a complete list anywhere on these boards, so I throught I'd post it. I thought it would be interesting to scan through all the 2600 ROM images looking for ASCII text. So I wrote a little program to do this automatically. I had it look for runs of 5 or more upper or lower case ascii characters in each ROM file. Even at 5 characters it turned up a lot of false positives, but it also came up with some very interesting things. Most where just copyrights or credits: big bird's egg catch (1983) (atari).a26 CHRISTOPHER H OMARZU blueprint (1983) (cbs electronics).a26 DIDOMENICO bmx air master (1989) (tnt games).a26 COPYRIGHT TNT GAMES DEVELOPED BY SCULPTURED SOFTWARE WRITTEN BY ADAM CLAYTON Bump 'N' Jump (1983) (Mattel) [b1].a26 Copyright Mattel Dave Akers Jeff Ratcliff Pat Dulong elk attack (1987) (atari).a26 ELK ATTACK Mark R Hahn gopher (1982) (us games).a26 COPYRIGHT US GAMES CORP james bond 007 (1983) (parker bros).a26 PJOE GAUCHER LOUIS MARBEL tutankham (1983) (parker bros).a26 PARKERBROS DAVEENGMAN Word Zapper (1982) (US Games) (PAL) [p1][!].a26 COPYRIGHT US GAMES CORP nGAME ZAPPER Mattel was a little posessive: star strike (1982) (mattel).a26 MATTEL MATTEL MATTEL MATTEL MATTEL These two roms had this same set of text in them. Sorta looks like some compiler commands or parameters: cosmic corridor (zimag).a26 space tunnel (bitcorp) (pal).a26 LINK 1.6 INIT TPLEN XMIN YMIN YMAX XMAX START CENT CC09 CC06 CC07 CC08 This one is very odd, looks like a chunck of disk commands and messages: parachute (homevision) (pal).a26 OPE APPEN RENAM CATALO MAXFILE BSAV BLOA AVAILABL RANGE ERRO WRITE PROTECTE END OF DAT FILE NOT FOUN VOLUME MISMATC ERRO DISK FUL FILE LOCKE SYNTAX ERRO NO BUFFERS These two actually have chuncks of source code left in them: pompeii (apollo) (prototype).a26 SCRLP1 STA STRTLINE NOP NOP STA WORK LDA (DNROCK1),Y STA BULLETR LDA MNT1,Y STA HIRESL lost luggage (1981) (apollo) [a1].a26 LSR A LSR A STA SNDTYPE LDA LDA #SUITCASE&255 STA INTL BCS CONTINUE TAX .BYTE 0,0,0,0,0,0 SUIT1 .BYT SUIT3 .BYTE $00,$18,$18,$3C,$24,$66,$42 .BYTE $00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00 SUIT4 .BYTE $00,$ BRIEF .BYTE $00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$18,$18 .BYTE $3C,$7E,$7E,$00,$00,$00,$00 SOCKS .BYTE $00,$44,$CC,$66, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 I am sure someone has done this before, but I haven't seen a complete list anywhere on these boards, so I throught I'd post it. Very interesting, indeed. Thanks for sharing this! Michael Rideout Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 Cool. I remember going through A8 stuff with a sector editor and finding some weird stuff here and there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 This one is very odd, looks like a chunck of disk commands and messages: parachute (homevision) (pal).a26 OPE APPEN RENAM CATALO MAXFILE BSAV BLOA AVAILABL RANGE ERRO WRITE PROTECTE END OF DAT FILE NOT FOUN VOLUME MISMATC ERRO DISK FUL FILE LOCKE SYNTAX ERRO NO BUFFERS This appears to be Apple II DOS 3.3. THis game was obviously developed on an Apple II. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 ...badly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 blueprint (1983) (cbs electronics).a26DIDOMENICO Hmm... This looks like a name, but what is it? D.I. Domenico? D. Idomenico? I've seen similar things in games, but I never thought to write them down. Lots of 7800 games have text in them. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercat Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 parachute (homevision) (pal).a26OPE APPEN RENAM CATALO MAXFILE BSAV BLOA AVAILABL RANGE ERRO WRITE PROTECTE END OF DAT FILE NOT FOUN VOLUME MISMATC ERRO DISK FUL FILE LOCKE SYNTAX ERRO NO BUFFERS 1022799[/snapback] I would guess that the byte following each of those messages was the last ASCII character, plus 128 (e.g. $CE following OPE, $C4 following APPEN, etc.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rom Hunter Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 (edited) Interesting stuff, DanBoris. Thanks for sharing! BTW: are these your findings of all you ROMS? Edited February 23, 2006 by Rom Hunter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 23, 2006 Author Share Posted February 23, 2006 This appears to be Apple II DOS 3.3. THis game was obviously developed on an Apple II. 1022825[/snapback] There was a 2600 development system for the Apple called the Frob, maybe that was used to develop these games. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 23, 2006 Author Share Posted February 23, 2006 Interesting stuff, DanBoris. Thanks for sharing! BTW: are these your findings of all you ROMS? 1022966[/snapback] I scanned every 2600 rom I had which is pretty much all of them, which the exception of a lot of hacks and alternate versions of games. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bcombee Posted February 23, 2006 Share Posted February 23, 2006 My guess is that on ROMs where you see assembly or computer commands, you're actually seeing the uninitialized memory from the dev system -- the assembled game didn't take up the whole space, and the assembler didn't clear memory first, so the chunk of memory saved to make the ROM just has what happened to be around in RAM earlier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zach Posted February 25, 2006 Share Posted February 25, 2006 Nice work, DanBoris. Have you tried Millipede yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted February 25, 2006 Share Posted February 25, 2006 Of course what is more interesting is the few games which actually USE their ASCII text. Since the 2600 had no character generator, most text was raw pixels. However, some of the later 16K and larger games actually used ASCII. I'm pretty sure that Fatal Run used ASCII. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercat Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 Since the 2600 had no character generator, most text was raw pixels.1024350[/snapback] Even programs that used character generators (e.g. Stellar Track and Dark Mage, and BASIC Programming) didn't use ASCII. Text would instead be stored as an offset into the character set. Using ASCII would require either having a minimum 59-character (blank=32 Z=90) set or else using a translation table to convert ASCII to something else. BASIC programming probably could have used ASCII (it's got an 81 character set) if the funny glyphs were given the codes of unused ASCII characters, but there still wouldn't have been much advantage. Dark Mage used a much smaller character set, and thus using ASCII would have complicated things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 26, 2006 Author Share Posted February 26, 2006 Nice work, DanBoris. Have you tried Millipede yet? 1024076[/snapback] Actually, I missed Millipede, here's what in it: DAVE STAUGAS LOVES BEATRICE HABLIG Anyone know the story behind this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 26, 2006 Author Share Posted February 26, 2006 Even programs that used character generators (e.g. Stellar Track and Dark Mage, and BASIC Programming) didn't use ASCII. Text would instead be stored as an offset into the character set. Using ASCII would require either having a minimum 59-character (blank=32 Z=90) set or else using a translation table to convert ASCII to something else. BASIC programming probably could have used ASCII (it's got an 81 character set) if the funny glyphs were given the codes of unused ASCII characters, but there still wouldn't have been much advantage. Dark Mage used a much smaller character set, and thus using ASCII would have complicated things. 1024653[/snapback] You are correct the cartridges you mention don't have any ASCII text in them, but Magicard does contain all the 6502 opcodes in ASCII: ILLADCANDASLBCCBCSBEQBITBMIBNEBPLBVCBVSCMPCPXCPYDECEORINCJMPJSRLDALDXLDYLSRORAROLRORSBCSTASTXSTYASLBRKCLCCLDCLICLVDEXDEYINXINYLSRNOPPHAPHPPLAPLPROLRORRTIRTSSECSEDSEITAXTAYTSXTXATXSTYA I X) RZ ZXZY)Y() A X Y Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 Nice work, DanBoris. Have you tried Millipede yet? 1024076[/snapback] Actually, I missed Millipede, here's what in it: DAVE STAUGAS LOVES BEATRICE HABLIG Anyone know the story behind this? 1024902[/snapback] I asked someone about this once. Apperently it was a girl (who also worked at Atari) that Dave was hot for. The person didn't recall if they ever got married or not, I'll have to dig out the e-mail and look. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 Nice work, DanBoris. Have you tried Millipede yet? 1024076[/snapback] Actually, I missed Millipede, here's what in it: DAVE STAUGAS LOVES BEATRICE HABLIG Anyone know the story behind this? 1024902[/snapback] I asked someone about this once. Apperently it was a girl (who also worked at Atari) that Dave was hot for. The person didn't recall if they ever got married or not, I'll have to dig out the e-mail and look. Tempest 1024917[/snapback] IIRC, a similar statement appears in the ST ROMs as well. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nbk Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 Nice work, DanBoris. Have you tried Millipede yet? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, I missed Millipede, here's what in it: DAVE STAUGAS LOVES BEATRICE HABLIG Anyone know the story behind this? First of all, Dave Staugas is/was a real person - true old school Atari assembler programmer who in the age of the Atari TOS was asked to do really complicated and awkward stuff. He was considerd a programmer thinking "around corners" - coming to very fundamentally different and at the same time truely brilliant solutions. In the Atari TOS and later with the Jaguar the company would ask him to figure out by software workarounds for hardware bugs, so that product development could go on without having to wait for a fixed batch of chips - or - alternatively - without ever requiring to run a fixed batch of chips. in the first place. For the most time when he was working at Atari in the 1196 Borregas Avenue Building in Sunnyvale I beleive to remember him driving a car with the California number plate "IO DRVR" :-) Bea(trice) Hablig is/was also a real person, but I am fully unaware if whe ever worked at Atari. She is/was a painter, photographer, installation and overall quite versatile artist. She studied art in University of California, Berkeley, and was living in Oakland - at least back in the mid nineties. She had numerous publications, appearances in local galleries, art projects and exhibitions in the greater SF Bay area starting in the at the brink of the eighties - the newest item on her web site is dated 2003. She is a very kind lady and it would certainly most appropriate to NOT be bothered with the code Dave left us in the ROMs - she might think it was not such a good idea... On the other hand I know for a fact that she and Dave were still quite good friends well after the time of the creation of any of those ROMs. I guess it could feel a bit strange if someone creates such line of text but I also still think that - considering it was one of the most efficient ways at that time to spread the sentence globally - is was a truely heartwarming gesture of Dave. Should anyone EVER get a hint where Dave might be today or what happend to him, i'd be extremely happy to learn about it, after all its well over a decade when we last met.... Have a trigger happy evening ! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FujiSkunk Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 Now that's how you revive an old thread, and that's how you make a first post! Welcome to AtariAge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 Now, did he love her or her art? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carpenter Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 Programmers are artists too. Sure he loved her _art_ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted January 16, 2009 Share Posted January 16, 2009 who knew there was romance in the 'ol 2600 roms themselves 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted January 18, 2009 Share Posted January 18, 2009 (edited) Theres lots of loving in those old atari games: In three of the HES games you'll get a proposal message. So instead of a screen like this: Sports Action Pak You'll get this if you press both fire buttons and power on the Atari: And if you press left on the on the left joystick while still holding the firebuttons it goes to: It looks a little funny that the Activision logo is still scrolling in the meantime. If they only knew. Now the Super Action Pak is also exactly the same, but the Super Hit Pak is slightly different then the rest as it has a row of hearts on the bottom, and no Activision logo. The following screen also starts with "I Love You". The Super Action Pak and the Sports Action Pak don't have this extra row of hearts, and are missing the "I Love You" on the following screen. Edited January 18, 2009 by Omegamatrix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 18, 2009 Share Posted January 18, 2009 Cool finding. I never knew about those. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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