Pharaoh (Mac OS Classic)

Pharaoh
Developer: Robert Martin Platform: Mac OS Classic Released in US: 1988 This game has debugging material.

Pharaoh is a Hamurabi-like land management game in which your ultimate goal is to see the completion of your pyramid.

Debug Menu

A functional debug mode can be restored with a little ResEditing. Open the MBAR resource, insert a new field, and assign it an ID of 4. This will give you access to two new commands:

Show Debug Values will toggle the lower right area between the Pending Contracts display and a readout of the game's variables.

To directly manipulate those figures, select Change Variable and use the prescribed format, e.g. oxHealth:1.

(Source: Tanara Kuranov)

Obscure Messages

Pharaoh has not one but five possible retorts, selected at random, to each impossibility you can throw at it: negative numbers of stones ("Are you talking about antimatter? I wouldn't build a pyramid out of that"), non-numeric quantities of acres ("We are planting wheat, not alphabet soup"), non-whole numbers of overseers ("How exactly do I deal with fractions? Dismemberment?")...

...but would you believe that it even responds to impossible things you can try from outside the game?

Select a Pharaoh saved game in the Finder and use the File menu's Print command:

I'm sorry. My printing is atrocious.

Nope, can't comply. I don't print things that way.

Did anybody ever tell you that you have beautiful eyes? I thought not. (I don't print).

Experimenting eh? Good try. Try again sometime.

No Kabish. No comprende. Uh uh!

Select multiple saved games and try to open them simultaneously:

I don't multitask. I do one thing at a time. But I do it well.

One file, ok. Two files, no. More than two, forget it.

Given one file, I can do real well. But I just can't handle more than that.

I'm just a one file type of program.

Please, you might overload me. One file only please.

With a utility like ResEdit, give an unrelated document the Pharaoh creator code of PHAR and try to open it:

I'm flattered by your confidence in me, but I really can't read that type of file.

Yes, I'm talented. And there is very little that I cannot do. But reading this type of file is unfortunately one of them.

I could try, but I don't think I'd succeed.

Hay, whatever you're up to, cut it out! I can't read that!

Oh get off it! You expect me to read that?