From: mjbrown@lonestar.utsa.edu (Marc J. Brown)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video
Subject: Yar's Revenge secret? and other 2600 tricks
Date: 25 Jul 92 10:49:48 GMT
Organization: University of Texas at San Antonio

Awhile back, someone mentioned something about a programmer's secret in the
old Atari2600 game Yar's Revenge.  Could somebody please E-mail me how to do
the secret?  Plus any other tricks there might happen to be in any other
games (aside from Adventure :).  I've decided to rake out the 75 games I have
and crank 'em up... ah, nostalgia!

BTW: Did you ever notice that, if a given game is really popular, people are
eventually going to find interesting bugs in it (a la SF2, with Guile's
neat tricks :)...?  Well, when Pac Man was popular on the 2600, I found
a keen little bug that I never hear people talk about...

Enter the up-down tunnel.  Often, it takes a few seconds before you appear
on the other side.  Anyways, while you're in "limbo", rapidly move up and
down on the joystick several times, and when you stop, end up moving down.
EG: up-down-up-down-up-down-up-down-up-DOWN  (for those who didn't catch
what I meant :).  If you see yourself leave the tunnel during the time you
do this, you'll have to start over 'cause it won't work.
   Now, if you did it correctly (and it takes practice), when you appear
at the top of the screen, rather than coming out of the tunnel, you appear
to "fold" your way onto the screen, and it looks strange.  Here's the neat
part.  At this point, when you move down, you go THROUGH THE BLOCKS in the
center of the screen.  You can only move up and down, though.  Once you go
back through the tunnel, it goes back to normal.  Cool trick, eh?

Now I'm going to talk about some tricks that are not only dangerous to your
Atari hardware and cartridges, but they require that you use the original
2600 (not the small, black one).
   All of the following tricks are performed by turning the 2600 unit off
and back on, with very little pause between (which is a no-no, but we were
using someone else's 2600 :).  Again, it takes a few tries (often, a LOT
of tries) but it eventually works.  Curiously, I have found that almost
EVERY game has some really odd but interestingly helpful malfunction when
you do it.  But I only remember a few of the interesting ones.

Asteroids: Having performed the no-no successfully, you'll begin playing
the game, only the asteroids are all white, and they all come at you from
the right side of the screen.  You can simply sit there pressing "fire"
until you faint, and the asteroids will never reach you.

Pitfall II: If you do it right, the first thing you see is graphic puke.
Moving around a bit, you discover that the cart started you on the floor
where Quickclaw was at!  (Normally, you have to go through some rather
severe pains to reach him).  Incidentally, this is the only way I ever
actually beat the game :).

That's about all I can remember... One question: Some people out there,
please tell us what YOU think the most obscure 2600 game was.  I have
a lot of REALLY obscure ones, but I'm mostly surprised at how few
Frogger II games I've seen other people in ownership of.  Anyone else?
(no need to mention games that were never released)

Finally, when is someone going to come out with a 2600-emulator?  The
Amiga could handle it (the 2600 uses copperlists similar to the Amiga,
and consequentially it can display more colors than the NES and has a
larger pallete), so why doesn't it? :)  We've got our Gameboy emulator...
(not really ;).

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"You fat, bloated BAKA!!" (_/(_/(_/(_/ \_)\_)\_)\___/(_/ \_)\___/ of Megawatts