Hidden secrets in games

Update: 29th December 2012 – See foot of page for addition from Vinny Mainolfi.

I’ve always had a bizarre interest in the things we were never meant to see – I don’t know why, it’s something i’ve had ever since the day I discovered a cheat which allowed me to be immune to fire/water in Fantasy World Dizzy and helped me to discover odd looking screens which were not part of the game.  The desire for discovering unseen materials is why I run a preservation project for games that never saw the light of day.  Getting hold of and sharing something that we waited months for back in the day when magazines showed promising previews of a particular game, and which eventually never showed.

However, it’s not just unreleased/lost games which interest me, but its the little details within the games that DID make it.  Most of you are probably well aware of the term “Easter egg” in the computing world, being a small piece of code which is buried away and unlocked in a particular way (Via a code or a key combination).   With C64 games, there are loads of easter eggs buried away in the shape of mini-games,  demo’s and messages from the developers – unlocked via a combination of key strokes or accessing a strange part of a game.

Finding an easter egg is pretty neat, but there is much more awaiting discovery that we may not be aware of – things classified as easter eggs maybe, but not intentional ones…

No, i’m talking about bits of unseen ‘assets’ within games …  unused sprites, music, background graphics and even levels!  There is a lot of this kind of thing tucked away in the games we all love and know very well, but unless you’re actively digging around – you most likely will never get to see these things.  You may not for instance get to see the cheeky message hidden away in Army Moves Part 2 (See below) unless you were hunting around in the code with a Machine Code monitor.

After starting a thread recently on Lemon64 forum, it seems others out there are interested in this kind of thing – and its got me hungry for starting up a new segment/category on the up and coming new GTW portal site (Which btw will be here soon!).  Very quick fire pages/entries for particular titles with hidden bits and pieces, showing you the assets or even how to get access to them.  It’s a slight expansion from just covering unreleased/lost games, but I think it will be an interesting one.  Let’s see how it goes….

As a taster, below are some samples of hidden bits and pieces discovered in a few C64 titles (Thanks to those over at Lemon64 for discovering them)…

1942 – 1986 Elite

Tucked away in the sprites is the main character from Ghost n Goblins, along with the flame torch and dagger weapon.  Not sure how he would have appeared in a WW2 game

Army Moves – 1987 Imagine

Hidden away in part-two, you can access the following story from Zach Townsend:

******************** HI TO ALL HACKERS, AND MANDY SMITH IF SHE’S
THERE. (LITTLE TART ). ANY FAN MAIL, SEND TO OCEAN SOFTWARE. ANY
EXTREMELY PRETTY BLONDES ( AGE 17+ ) LOOKING FOR A REAL MAN, THEN
PHOTOS IN THE POST A MOI ‘. NOW FOR A BIT OF INSIDE INFO ! EYES -
BLUE. HAIR – YES. SEX – SURE, ANYTIME.BRAINS – WELL, I’M WORKING FOR
OCEAN. FAVE GROUPS ARE :- LEVEL 42 – SIMPLE MINDS – AHA – WHAM -
DURAN-DURAN – MICHAEL JACKSON LEVEL 42′S LATEST LP ON CD IS MEGA BRILL
FAVE GAMES :- WHY ‘ARMY MOVES’ OF COURSE NO, I HAVEN’T GOT ANY FAVE’S.
TRAMPOLINING’S GOOD FOR A LAUGH, BONKING UP AND DOWN ( I MEAN
BOUNCING, DON’T I ?) ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE’S A GIRL WITH A BODY LIKE
H.NN.H’S, DOING IT AS WELL. HI TO PALS AT CANTERBURY COLLEGE – STEVE,
PAUL, MARK ETC. + ALL THOSE I’VE FORGOTTEN.WHY WERE DELTA AND NEMESIS
SO CRAP, AFTER GOOD REVIEWS ? MAYBE I’M JUST SPOILT BY THE ARCADE
MACHINES. I DUNNO. WHEN DO I GET A PORSCHE ? WHY DID SO MANY PLONKERS
BUY BREAKOUT II? WHO WATCHES MOONLIGHTING ? YES, ITS GOING DOWN THE
DRAIN. TAMING OF THE SHREW, MY BUM CAN CYBIL SHEPHERD ACT ? NOOO. CAN
BRUCEY BOY SING ? NOOO. IS NICK KAMEN A COMPLETE PLONKER,OR DOES HE
JUST ACT LIKE ONE ? WAS CROC DUNDEE GOOD ? BY THE WAY, IF YOU PLAY THE
CASSETTE ON SIDE B YOU SHOULD HEAR SAM FOX’S NEW SINGLE. IT’S CALLED
‘EEEEEEKKK !!! I DIDN’T MEAN DO THAT !’ IF THIS GAME GETS A BAD REVIEW
THEN OCEANS’ TAKE THE EDITOR OUT TO DINNER ISN’T WORKING ANY MORE.
OKAY, I’LL SIGN OFF NOW, BYE *** ZACKER

Cobra – 1986 Ocean Software

Again – hidden away in the main sprites is this nasty shaven headed thug which never made an appearance in the final game:

Delta – 1987 Thalamus

Check out the SID file and its sub tunes to hear an array of little Sanxion tune snippets which were meant for when you collected different powerups.  Although the tunes were tucked away in the game’s code, they were never used.

Fantasy World Dizzy

Grab yourself a copy of issue 15 of Commodore Format and type in the immunity listing cheats for either this game or Treasure Island Dizzy.  The immunity to fire/water will mean that dropping into the large lake/lava areas will have you falling through nothing, until you hit some rather bizarre looking screens with random objects/coins placed on them.

Finders Keepers – 1985 Mastertronic

Locked away in the sprites is a horse with your main character ready to be overlaid.  Unless this appears in a previously unseen ending, this was never used.

Fuzzball – 1992 System 3

We have done a fair amount of hacking around with this one, especially as its a lost/unreleased game.  Locked away was not only a series of unused sprites across the 2 level demo…

… but also remains of the other levels (sadly without graphic elements) with sprite pointers intact.  These were accessed by changing level pointers in the code.  Unfortunately they weren’t playable:

A hidden level - missing graphics, but with sprites moving as intended

Spellcast – 1991 Genesis / Zzap 64

We love this game demo – as well as there being pointers for other levels (About 8 in total we think), there was also this skeleton creature locked away and unused:

Maybe this was something intended for level 2?

Super Pipeline 2 – 1985 Mastertronic

An awesome game.  Plenty of sprites locked away potentially (Though I think the developer’s heads which are in the sprite memory were actually used?)… However, this certainly wasn’t used… a woman’s torso which has the bra disappear in the next frame

I *think* one of the staff heads should have been situated on top – staff secretary perhaps?

Topper the copper – 1985 English Software

Not really unused assets as such, but something potentially a bit naughty.  It seems locked away in this game are sprites from Gremlin Software’s Thing on a Spring.  Very odd it was thought, but then it becomes clear where the developer got his inspiration from when you see the main sprite in action (Which animates rather like Thing )

Things are being examined now to see if actually Topper the Copper borrows any code from Thing on a Spring.

The Eidolon – 1985 Activision

And finally, the popular 3D romp from Activision has a creature locked away and unused, but with a careful bit of hacking can be reactivated in the levels:

(NEW!) UCM (1987 Mastertronic)

A quick addition thanks to Vinny Mainolfi, who found this tucked away in the game code:

HI THERE! TO GET INFINITE LIVES, TAKE OUT THAT NASTY LITTLE DEC JUST BEFORE THAT JSR BELOW!  SAY HI TO ME IF YOU SEND THE POKE INTO ZZAP!  CHEERS.  GREMLIN

Fiona Rides Out (1985 Interceptor)

Another  addition thanks to Vinny Mainolfi, who found this tucked away in the game code:

Velocipede 2 (Players)

Yet another addition thanks to Vinny Mainolfi, who found that most of Velocipede 2 is controlled by BASIC.  Here is a screenshot of the high score code:

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