Deadly Towers

Deadly Towers is an excruciatingly painful exercise in tedium by Irem and Lenar.

Debug Screens
Several debugging tools can be activated via the Family BASIC keyboard. Hold A + B on Controller 1 along with one of the following keys, then reset the console:


 * M - Monitor adjust
 * C - Color adjust
 * L - CRC test
 * T - Timer
 * S - Sound check
 * @ - CHR RAM test
 * ESC - Reset

Press Start or Select during any of the tests to proceed to the password screen, or any direction on the D-Pad to reset to the title screen.

CRC Test


Calculates some checksums, then displays "NO ERROR COMPLETED".

Timer


Displays a simple timer. Press A to start the timer, A again to reset it to zero, or B to stop it.

Sound Check


You might think there's a sound test here, but sadly that is not the case: the code simply writes the string "SOUND CHECK" to the screen and goes into an infinite loop.

CHR RAM Test
Tests the game's CHR RAM by filling it with a single value and reading it back, and then displays either a green (pass) or red (fail) screen. For some reason, the test was originally intended to alternate between writing and, but it seems to have been altered to only write.

Reset
Continually resets the game (via an indirect JMP to the RESET vector at ) until you release the buttons. May have had another function at some point in time.

Programmer Message
At (US) or  (Japan), there's a secret message from the developers. For whatever reason, the Japanese version ends with two extra exclamation marks and has an extra space before "GOOD BYE".

DISASSEMBLE? HELLO ! THIS IS DISASSEMBLE MESSAGE FOR YOU. THIS PROGRAM WAS MADE IN JAPAN TOKYO 10 NOV 1986 COPY RIGHT BY IREM CORP.PROGRAMMED AND LICENSED BY LENAR SPLENDOR TEAM GOOD BYE !

Unknown
An odd bit of text is at in the Japanese version, after the line "PEACE WILL PROSPER IN FUTURE". Its location suggests it was supposed to appear somewhere in the ending.

HOW WAS IT ?

Regional Differences
The list of room names was cleaned up for the American release.

The ending message was changed slightly in the US version to correct a grammatical error.