Phoenix 200,000 point trick, it really works!!!

Artisan2084

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Some of you may know this already, but if you shoot 3 birds in a row as they are flying up (and flapping their wings) you get 200,000 points added to your score.

I used to have a dedicated Phoenix and I did it a couple of times on it. The other day I pulled it off on a 60-in-1 Multicade board.
 

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I've done it a few times over the years. I've only done it once when I was trying to do it... it usually just happens by chance for me.
I wish it wasn't such a large bonus, as it really skews the scoring. If it were 20K instead of 200K that would be more appropriate.
 
It's not really a bonus, it's a bug in the program. See the following code analysis:
http://www.donhodges.com/phoenix.htm

That's very interesting... I'm going to have to take a closer look at that.
I remember seeing someone with a >400K score before, and I just assumed they had done the 200K trick twice. But that doesn't jive with Don's analysis.... He would have had to have done the trick and then gained 200K+ legitimately.
 
Same ROMs on your game board that are running in MAME. Where do you think people get the ROM images to burn new Eproms for their arcade board?:D

But it is possible to write code that will work in MAME but not on a real board (and vice versa). I know that all too well....
 
That's very interesting... I'm going to have to take a closer look at that.
I remember seeing someone with a >400K score before, and I just assumed they had done the 200K trick twice. But that doesn't jive with Don's analysis.... He would have had to have done the trick and then gained 200K+ legitimately.

There's a tougher to pull off, 100k "suicide trick" as well that is a legal tactic for TG purposes. These can be done as long as the board is the proper one you are on and it doesn't reset your score and only adds the 100k to it so a few of these plus the 200k bird trick and you are on your way.
 
There's a tougher to pull off, 100k "suicide trick" as well that is a legal tactic for TG purposes. These can be done as long as the board is the proper one you are on and it doesn't reset your score and only adds the 100k to it so a few of these plus the 200k bird trick and you are on your way.

Never seen the suicide trick... going to have to learn how to do that. I assume that's another bug exploit?
 
Never seen the suicide trick... going to have to learn how to do that. I assume that's another bug exploit?

Yup. I did it by accident the other day. The 200k trick is pretty easy to pull off on the 2nd screen on most romsets.
 
Yup. I did it by accident the other day. The 200k trick is pretty easy to pull off on the 2nd screen on most romsets.

Presumably you mean shooting the left most 2 birds in formation on the first wave? Basically, move straight to screen left and shoot the leftmost 2 birds with 2 shots (don't hit anything else) then sit right in the left corner of the screen until one of the birds flies under your ship and crashes into you. That gives you the bonus and free ships (can't remember the exact score you get - a little over 100,000 I think). IIRC it only works on one version of the board / roms though, and again I can't remember which! I used to use this back in the day. You can pull it off twice to get >200,000 then perhaps the '3 flying birds' bug to get a further 200,000.
 
Presumably you mean shooting the left most 2 birds in formation on the first wave? Basically, move straight to screen left and shoot the leftmost 2 birds with 2 shots (don't hit anything else) then sit right in the left corner of the screen until one of the birds flies under your ship and crashes into you. That gives you the bonus and free ships (can't remember the exact score you get - a little over 100,000 I think). IIRC it only works on one version of the board / roms though, and again I can't remember which! I used to use this back in the day. You can pull it off twice to get >200,000 then perhaps the '3 flying birds' bug to get a further 200,000.

This doesn't work for me... I believe I'm running the original Amstar version (with my own freeplay hack, but that shouldn't affect anything).
Does anyone have a video of these suicide tricks?
 
Presumably you mean shooting the left most 2 birds in formation on the first wave? Basically, move straight to screen left and shoot the leftmost 2 birds with 2 shots (don't hit anything else) then sit right in the left corner of the screen until one of the birds flies under your ship and crashes into you. That gives you the bonus and free ships (can't remember the exact score you get - a little over 100,000 I think). IIRC it only works on one version of the board / roms though, and again I can't remember which! I used to use this back in the day. You can pull it off twice to get >200,000 then perhaps the '3 flying birds' bug to get a further 200,000.

You have to do the 3 bird trick first as that replaces your score digits with the 20x,xxx, it does not increment. Therefore if you do the suicide trick prior to 3 bird, the 3 bird trick will wipe out your 100k and essentially net you 100k points instead by replacing the score digits.
 
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