Mouse Stampede

Mouse Stampede
Developer: Mark of the Unicorn Publisher: Mark of the Unicorn Platform: Mac OS Classic Released in US: 1984 This game has uncompiled source code. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has revisional differences.

Mouse Stampede is like Millipede, but with rodents instead of arthropods, cheese instead of mushrooms, and ouse Stam instead of illi.

Revisional Differences

An updated version was produced in the mid-nineties, and posted as a free easter egg on MOTU's web site. Some of its changes added compatibility with recent systems: multitasking awareness, a centered playfield on larger screens, and the ability to quit at any time instead of rebooting.

Build Dates

Both versions include a date in the owner resource: 30 July 1984 for the retail release and 25 January 1994 for the download. The latter is one day after the tenth anniversary of the Macintosh, which may have been the author's occasion for revisiting the game.

Title Screen

Version 1.0	Version 2.0

Jason Linhart is well-attested as Mouse Stampede's developer, from a caption in the Baltimore Sun to a Slashdot comment by MS sprite artist Bill Spitzak. A 1983 Byte article also names Linhart as MOTU's president at the time. Conversely, there's no record of a Tom Wade having any association with the company. Why the first version went out under that byline is an enigma, to say nothing of "Walter" and "A Herd of Walruses".

Help Screen

A page of online documentation was added to replace the printed instructions.

Start Dialog

Semaphore Signal's review expressed confusion about the option to choose a starting score. Version 2.0 added an explanation of its purpose as a difficulty switch.

Version 1.0	Version 2.0

Copy Protection Strings

The game's theme song riffs on "Three Blind Mice", and so does its copy protection.

The disk check compares two otherwise unused strings in the application — FarmersWifeCarvingKnife at 70DF and 1.0.0 at 70B3 — with their counterparts at the beginning of the file Stampede Stuff. If either fails to match, the game is "cut off" by a spontaneous reboot. (And you'll never, ever manage to copy that file, because it's locked behind the impregnable bozo bit.)

The only other legible text in Stampede Stuff is the phrase "Stampede Protector".

Version 2.0 no longer includes the file, the strings, or any copy protection.

Source Code

In version 2.0, some source code fragments were written to what used to be empty space. They can be seen at the beginning of the application in a hex editor.

Date=0;
		}
	else {
		count=size

sallersean renam

rr=ReadDateTime(&time);
	time=time-86400L;
	i=6;
	for (j=0; j<4; ++j) {
		if (HiScores[i].Date<time) {
			for (k=i; k<9; ++k) Hi