Funny message after Galaga high score entry.

[cwilkson]

I just saw a funny message pop up after putting in my initials on Galaga. I've used WAR for my high score name since 1985. But since I bumped the GF's name off the board I used ASS instead.

When I finished I saw a funny message pop up for about 1-2 seconds, all in red. I wasn't expecting it so I didn't have time to read it all. But it said something like "You hear Mark yelling up from the basement…" and some more that I didn't catch.

WTF? Why have I never seen this before? Is it an Easter egg on the high score kit? Is it because I entered ASS? Is it something special for the 5th spot in the table? All of the above? Did the GF hack it just to mess with me? (unlikely) Did I dream the whole thing? At 8:30 on Monday? That seems more likely. What?

I want to read the rest of it but I played 2 more games and couldn't even make it to 100k (suck!) so I couldn't repro it.

Of course the forum search was no help and Google has been worse than useless for years. It doesn't help that I'm on my phone. Ugh.

 

[bobbyb13]

Looking forward to hearing someone corroborate this with more detail!
Hilarious

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

It will have to be someone better at Galaga than me.

That much is certain.

 

[jawhn]

Paging @KaBoom1701, the Galaga trivia expert...

You could always scroll through the ROM files from MAME and see if that text is in there somewhere. That sounds crazy. Maybe they're referencing Spaeth?

 

[KaBoom1701]

Interesting.

Original board. Does it have any HSS kit on it and from who?

 

[maberle]

What were you smoking when you saw the message?

 

[cwilkson]

Maybe they're referencing Spaeth?

No, he would be yelling from the coffee table.

 

[steph]

I looked at the binary images for all the eprom files,
and did not see any such text string.

The only readable text I could find was

PUSH START BUTTON/p..GAME OVER/p..READY !/P..PLAYER 1/.PLAYER 2/p..STAGE /...CHALLENGING STAGE/...NUMBER OF HITS/...BONUS /...FIGHTER CAPTURED/... /m..PERFECT c/s..SPECIAL BONUS 10000 PTS/B..GALAGA/...]] SCORE ]]/(..50 100/*..80 160/+../;..e 1981 MIDWAY MFGaCOa/^../...]RESULTS]/2..SHOTS FIRED /. MISSILES/5..NUMBER OF HITS /8..HIT]MISS RATIO /.$`//..1ST BONUS FOR /2..2ND BONUS FOR /5..AND FOR EVERY /.0000 PTS/


So I'm gonna go with "Smoking Something for $400 Alex" ...

;-)

Steph

 

[HudsonArcade]

Interesting.

Original board. Does it have any HSS kit on it and from who?

It wouldn't be saving high scores without a kit.

 

[KaBoom1701]

Well technically the game does saves HS. It just wipes them out when powered off.

 

[SynaMax]

I think it's an easter egg with the high score kit. The Cutting Room Floor doesn't have anything about a red message for Galaga but Gaplus does have something interesting.

https://tcrf.net/Gaplus_(Arcade)

If you type in "JNIWAR", a hidden message in Japanese pops up. Just thinking out loud here but maybe the high score kit is based off of Galplus high score code and the easter egg was repurposed for the kit? When I did the shield mod for Sinistar, I reused part of the original Sinistar easter egg code to make my own message, so maybe that's what happened here.

 

[cwilkson]

Interesting.

Original board. Does it have any HSS kit on it and from who?

I looked at the binary images for all the eprom files,
and did not see any such text string.

What were you smoking when you saw the message?

So I'm gonna go with "Smoking Something for $400 Alex" ...

Nope. I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I don't do drugs. (except caffeine and yellow #5) If I hallucinated it it would be because it's Monday morning and there's no coffee yet. Add to that the fact that I had to get up 2 hours earlier than normal. But no, I really saw it!



I did mention the HSS kit in my first post:

WTF? Why have I never seen this before? Is it an Easter egg on the high score kit?

But I didn't explicitly say that the kit is installed and running on my machine. So...

I have a high score kit from highscoresaves.com installed on the machine. Is there an Easter egg on that kit?

Now it's explicit.

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

I think it's an easter egg with the high score kit. The Cutting Room Floor doesn't have anything about a red message for Galaga but Gaplus does have something interesting.

https://tcrf.net/Gaplus_(Arcade)

If you type in "JNIWAR", a hidden message in Japanese pops up. Just thinking out loud here but maybe the high score kit is based off of Galplus high score code and the easter egg was repurposed for the kit? When I did the shield mod for Sinistar, I reused part of the original Sinistar easter egg code to make my own message, so maybe that's what happened here.

If there is that much text, then it would be possible to repurpose it.

Now it's up to the Op to:
1. Duplicate the event
2. Film it

 

[KaBoom1701]

Nope. I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I don't do drugs. (except caffeine and yellow #5) If I hallucinated it it would be because it's Monday morning and there's no coffee yet. Add to that the fact that I had to get up 2 hours earlier than normal. But no, I really saw it!



I did mention the HSS kit in my first post:

But I didn't explicitly say that the kit is installed and running on my machine. So...

I have a high score kit from highscoresaves.com installed on the machine. Is there an Easter egg on that kit?

Now it's explicit.

Yes I can confirm when I was testing Joe's Galaga HSS kit he does in fact modify the code and add some eater eggs. One of them is if you make to stage 256 the next bonus stage has disappearing / cloaked ships. So it would not surprise me if he messed with the HSS table as well.

 

[WadeLanham]

Seems safe to assume it was part of the high score kit.

 

[mattosborn]

I have a high score kit from highscoresaves.com installed on the machine. Is there an Easter egg on that kit?

I believe Joe liked to joke that Mark lived in his mom's basement (and is known for using the initials "ASS"), so it would not surprise me that he asked for this dig to be added to the kit.

 

[cwilkson]

If there is that much text, then it would be possible to repurpose it.

Now it's up to the Op to:
1. Duplicate the event
2. Film it

When I was 14-15 I could score a million+ on Galaga. While skimming through pro wrestling magazines and eating a hot dog and nachos and pizza. And curly fries. All at the same time.
I'm not 15 anymore.

I can usually get about 150k these days. But today I totally sucked. 105k to get the 5th spot. Then I couldn't even do that again.

I might be able to snap a picture if I do it again but it happens so fast and I'm not set up with tripod and recording camera.

To paraphrase Hector:
Always record everything. Because world records might happen.

Or in this case Mark might start yelling gibberish from his moms basement.

 

[tstone]

Hahaha love it!