Are those games too hard? Cheat! Harvey
Kong Tin shows you how!
I enjoy playing Arcade Games as a form of
entertainment and while there have been some excellent games
released, there have been many that, although playable, have been
far too hard to complete. Have you completed SEA DRAGON, THE BLUE
MAX, FORT APOCALPYSE, MINER 2049'er, SNOKIE, LASER HAWK,
BOULDERDASH, BOULDERDASH II, and BRUCE LEE without cheating? I have.
Have you completed DRELBS, ASTROCHASE, TAIL OF BETA LYRAE,
DEATHZONE, SHAMUS II, KISSIN' KOUSINS, and DIAMONDS? I have, but had
to resort to cheating!
This article gives you guidelines about how to
conquer certain games by changing the number of lives to 50, 100 or,
if possible, the maximum of 255 lives. You will need a suitable disk
editor, and reference to the chart accompanying this article.
Unfortunately I can only recommend this information for disk users.
I don't know of a suitable cassette editor, and there are the added
hassles of cassette copy protection (which I think is impossible for
a byte editor to handle?), plus the long time involved with
re-saving the changed program. My information is only approximate
and you may require several tries to zap the right byte. So be
patient and be careful!
Before you start zapping, I have to issue the
warning that you are responsible for your own actions once you start
editing bytes on your own disks. You do so at your own risk. I will
not be held responsible, nor will PAGE 6, if you zap the wrong byte,
and can't change it back to the original!
HOW I DISCOVERED THE SECRETS
I have no knowledge of Assembly/Machine Code
programming, but I looked at the source codes of FIREBUG and
PLANETARY DEFENSE from ANALOG Magazine and saw how the lives were
initialised. In PLANETARY DEFENSE, it was with LDA #4, i.e. load 4
into the accumulator. On disk, this would appear as A9 04, but it is
possible of course that this combination of bytes would appear
several times during the program, and only one of them would control
the lives. So, it was a matter of trial and error to narrow down
which is the right byte. Although it is possible for a programmer to
set the lives with a LDX command I have found it rare, only FIREBUG
used LDX, and I presume using LDY is possible too? LDX appears as A2
and LDY as AO on the disk. In all the changes I have made in
commercially released games, LDA was used for setting up the lives.
If a game has 3 lives, I checked for A903, or
A904, or A902. There are several different ways a programmer may
decide to count down the lives. Also, it is possible that the
programmer may decide not to use LDA to set the lives at all. In
that case, I have to give up the search, because I don't know what
other options there are to look for. There are programs which I
can't add extra lives to e.g. DOMAIN OF THE UNDEAD, PANIC EXPRESS,
FLIP & FLOP and others.
HOW TO ZAP 'EM YOURSELF
Right, have you got your sector editor handy? Some
are very easy to use, once you get use to zapping a few bytes. For
convenience, you need one that has a HEX SEARCH, a MODIFY (so that
you can make the change and write the changed sector to the disk)
and other extras that are useful, are an ATASCII search and HEX and
DEC convert.
Before you zap, take note of the original byte,
and it's exact location, so that you can change it back to it's
former self, in case anything goes wrong. One fail-safe way, is to
only zap a copy if you are able to make one, because it is remotely
possible that if copy protection is in the sector you zap, you would
zap out the protection/and won't be able to load the program.
USING THE TABLE
Use the HEX SEARCH to find the reference bytes
given, e.g. A903, to find out where it is on your disk, they should
be at the location given but check first. Always keep a note of what
the original byte was and where it was, before you change it. In the
example of A903 you would change 03 to the number of lives you want.
Remember it is in hexadecimal and the maximum of lives possible is
255 i.e. FF. In some cases using a large number of lives will
disrupt the screen display too much, and recommend the maximum
limits shown in the chart. Have fun!
FOOTNOTE
I do have a great respect for the programmers who
have written the games, but I can't help thinking that in some cases
they set the difficulty far too high. Even with 255 lives, some
games are still too hard to successfully finish. Playability is a
very important part of any program, yet many games seem to have been
inadequately play-tested to their conclusion. If the games could
have been successfully completed with reasonable practice, I would
have not bothered trying to add extra lives to the program.
The information is only approximate and maybe
other readers could provide more accurate information for a future
chart, when they try any of the above edits. And perhaps readers
could send in information on games I have not covered?
EXTRA LIVES INFORMATION
|
Program |
Occ. |
Sect No |
Byte Loc. |
(DD) |
From |
To |
|
DROL |
|
316 |
78 |
NO |
A904 |
32 |
|
THRESHOLD |
|
159 |
32 |
NO |
A904 |
63 |
|
JUMPMAN |
|
650 |
01 |
NO |
A906 |
32 |
|
BELLUM |
|
95 |
08 |
NO |
A904 |
FF |
|
MEDIATOR |
|
145 |
0A |
NO |
A904 |
63 |
|
GHOSTCHASER |
1st |
3 |
C6 |
YES |
A904 |
FF |
|
OLLIES FOLLIES |
1st |
61 |
A8 |
YES |
A904 |
FF |
|
MONTEZUMA'S REVENGE |
2nd |
15 |
|
YES |
A905 |
FF |
|
FIREFLEET |
|
17 |
15 |
YES |
A904 |
FF |
|
MATTERHORN |
|
39 |
|
YES |
A903 |
63 |
|
SHAMUS CASE II |
|
8 |
35 |
YES |
A904 |
FF |
|
TAIL/BETA LYRAE |
|
72 |
|
YES |
A907 |
FF |
|
KISSIN' KOUSINS |
|
8 |
|
YES |
A905 |
FF |
|
DRELBS |
|
17 |
08 |
YES |
A905 |
FF |
|
This applies to the version with Title animation only. Even
with 255 lives it is still too hard to complete and I
recommend disabling the missiles too. |
|
To disable missiles |
|
16 |
F8 |
YES |
A903 |
06 |
|
DEATHZONE |
|
5 |
|
YES |
A903 |
63 |
|
MOONSHUTTLE |
9th |
27 |
|
YES |
A904 |
32 |
|
PINHEAD |
1st |
2 |
FC |
YES |
A905 |
63 |
|
ASTROCHASE |
3rd |
15 |
0F |
YES |
A903 |
FF |
|
PREPPIE II |
1sr |
1 |
2E |
YES |
A902 |
63 |
|
GUNLAW |
3rd |
159 |
01 |
YES |
A903 |
63 |
|
QUASIMODO II |
2nd |
29 |
63 |
YES |
A904 |
FF |
|
SCOOTER |
1st |
53 |
D9 |
YES |
A904 |
63 |
|
NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTERS |
1st |
46 |
F9 |
YES |
A905 |
63 |
|
AIRSTRIKE |
4th |
24 |
CE |
YES |
A903 |
14 |
|
JETBOOT JACK |
1st |
35 |
3C |
YES |
A905 |
63 |
|
DIAMONDS |
2nd |
5 |
54 |
YES |
A903 |
35 |
|
SNOKIE |
12th |
53 |
5D |
YES |
A903 |
28 |
|
VENUS VOYAGER2 |
3rd |
18 |
A5 |
YES |
A907 |
63 |
|
STEEPLEJACK |
last |
53 |
BE |
YES |
A904 |
63 |
|
BATTY BUILDERS |
|
2 |
AF |
YES |
A905 |
63 |
|
ELIMINATOR |
1st |
2 |
BD |
YES |
A906 |
32 |
|
BUSY BABY |
4th |
39 |
84 |
YES |
A903 |
32 |
|
KID GRID |
2nd |
8 |
A2 |
YES |
A905 |
63 |
|
This applies for the number of stuns, not lives |
|
CLOWNS AND BALLOONS |
|
31 |
C2 |
YES |
A903 |
14 |
|
STELLAR SHUTTLE |
last |
27 |
F2 |
YES |
A903 |
32 |
Occ. refers to which occurence of the byte
combination to change. Where DD is YES, double the sector number if
you are using Single/1050 Density. Please regard the Sector No. as
approximate only. FF=255, 63=99, 32=50. In all the programs in
the chart, LDA was used to set the lives. LDA=A9, remember not alter
the A9, but the number that follows.
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