Crashable Spectrum games?
Following the discussion at:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=24821
I was wondering what Spectrum games could be made to crash or fail (programming wise) in some way. What Spectrum games could be made to lock up, reset the Spectrum, etc, when you did something wrong, or something that the programmer never forsaw, etc.
Any ideas?
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=24821
I was wondering what Spectrum games could be made to crash or fail (programming wise) in some way. What Spectrum games could be made to lock up, reset the Spectrum, etc, when you did something wrong, or something that the programmer never forsaw, etc.
Any ideas?
Post edited by ewgf on
Comments
Crusoe crashed frequently; doing practically anything would crash it sooner or later.
Avalon has a door which goes out of the game space into uncharted memory, which soon leads to a crash. I remember it was really tricky to get through it, so I was pretty chuffed when I did - until everything went wibbly.
PS.
Every Melbourne House game that I ever bought.
PS2.
Souls of Darkon - if you type into the input window something wider than the display window it goes into a loop of the form: "oh, this won't fit on this line, I'll display it on the next line" - scroll - "oh, this won't fit on this line, I'll display it on the next line" - scroll ... ad infinitum ...
I know you can crash Cauldron, not sure which set of keys you hold down but it'll take it back to basic and if you type RUN, it'll start you in the pumpkins deadly room. Of course you can't finish the game by doing this but it was still interesting.
There's a level were one of the evil black balls is running back and forwards in a room with two half pipes. You could gather momentum by going in the same direction as he was pushing you and help him knock you off the edge.
This would crash the computer
Or even... If you went to the opposite edge and rolled down to meet him in the middle like a living newton's cradle, the game would invariably crash then. It was almost like the sheer force hurt the speccy
APB used to lock up all the time in one of the later levels, which was a big shame because I really liked the game.
Yeah APB was always crashing. As did Wonder Boy on the 128k.
It is a top down viewed maze game where each screen is a section of the maze e.g. A right hand bend, a cross roads, a T junction, u bend, or open area with lots of exits.
There are places where the exits to not match up with the next screen, for example if you whent as far right as you could go in an exit path going up.
Some times the computer would beep and send you back to the screen you came from, other times the game would crash. Only what would happen is that the game then generates random but totally playable screens.
It is clear that what has happened is that the area of memory holding the maze layouts has become corrupted, or that the game is pointing to random sections incorrect sections of memory and thus the screens look random.
Sometimes, it will point to an area of memory that is a real screen and the game continues as it should. Other times you would be walled in and could not exit.
I used to play this game allot because I actually enjoyed playing it when it crashed, it was a challenge to see if you could get it back to normal.
I have a vivid memory of this happening to me, thinking it was a joke, but phoning anyway and the nice man who answered sent me a new copy.
Hmm, I wonder if this appears in the source code that Simon Brattel released??
I'll have a look when I get back to a computer next week.
Rescue would also crash randomly. Whenver you dropped a bomb and went to fire at it, the minute you pressed the fire key the computer would go blank and revert back to '1982 Sinclair Reasearch'. That only hapenned a few times though.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1380
Might answer a question or two. Was my first ever post here too. :)
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
Was that the version that came free with Your Sinclair on the Magnificent 7 covertape? Because that was messed up anyway. I have an original version that works fine, but the YS one ALWAYS messed up. (both running on the same Speccy)
and you could reset the computer on How To Be a Complete Bastard which would actually reset the machine
plus i never bought a copy of head over heels that loaded...
There is a brief pause halfway through the title tune of this game. It is supposed to be there and is part of the tune. However, if you press a key during this pause the game will freeze and you will have to reload to play the game.
A strange bug indeed and obviously found completely by accident.
Yea it was the one that was free with YS. Don't remember anyone complaining at the time so i assumed it was just my copy.
Regards,
Shaun.
I found The Wild Bunch used to crash every now and then too. If I remember rightly, it usually happened when I ordered a Red Eye at the saloon.
It never used to crash for me when I ordered a redeye, but I always used to end up stumbling into somebody and getting belted one.
I went mental every time and unplugged the speccy right away!
Then when I did play it I thought it was a bit cack tbh.
The 580-point version of Colossal Cave (a CP/M game, so it needs a +3) deliberately locks up when you press the "Emergency Stop" button in the computer center(sic).
Exolon: if you jump near the top of the screen and get killed near the top of your jump, it bumps you up off the top of the screen, causing the Spectrum to crash.
This happens on the second level of Ghost n Goblins as well
Really? I finished TWB a few times and also "ported" it to the SAM Coup?. I can't remember ever managing to crash it. AFAICR very little MC is used - only for some FX (audio I believe) - the rest is BASIC.
You'd get a reset 9 times out of 10 with this method.
I also recall getting regular 'C Nonsense in BASIC' messages from Ocean's terrible 'Kong'. If memory serves me well, it was always on the first screen.