Talk:The New Tetris
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I don't think any other article could've fit as #100. Wow. RahanAkero
Possible Crash Handling Screen?
So tonight I was fiddling around with the Audio options for a small run of Marathon I was going to do, but right when I was leaving the Options screen, I ran into this white screen that appeared suddenly. Basically, the screen congratulated me for finding this it, even though I didn't do anything that seemed to out of the ordinary, and it gave me the "2fast4u" cheat code (Which, if you don't know, entering in the Name Select screen and then playing a game causes some insanely fast block falling speeds after around five or six pieces). It's also worth noting that despite the screen having a white background with black text, the code was in a color-changing font. The game told me to shut off the Nintendo 64 to resume playing basically, so I reseted, but I encountered it again shortly afterwards. After turning the Nintendo 64 off completely this time and taking the cartridge out and back in, the screen went away.
This is the first time I've ever seen this screen, but I haven't heard anything about it, which is what confuses me (I just bought the game used not to long ago). I'm certain a quick Google search could show similar situations, but this got me curious. This appeared suddenly and I wasn't doing ANYTHING. Could this be some sort of "Crash Handling" screen? It's worth pointing out that Sonic 3D Blast (Genesis) had a similar sort of crash handling screen. If the game suffered from some sort of serious error (a game freeze), or if you were to hit the cart hard enough while it was being played on actual hardware, it would congratulate you for finding the secret level select screen before sending you there. The only thing that I think could have affected it there was that there may have been some dust in the cart to cause the error, as I had to turn it on and off once to get the game started.
If it IS, and I'm pretty sure it is considering I got the screen to appear twice while going through two different menus, could there be a second? The New Tetris has TWO cheat codes that affect game play, one is the insane speed, and there's another I remember hearing about that makes the AI in Computer challenges MUCH faster and more intelligent. Why create only one screen for one cheat code? I'm fairly certain there's another, but both screens gave me the same code.
Could someone please investigate the nature of this screen and determine if it is caused by game freezing, and hopefully add it to the Wiki? I'll have to look into this further, but somebody here may be able to explain the whole crash handling much better than me. I also need to find a ROM image for Project 64 to get any screens. --Daluigi208 02:22, 16 February 2013 (EST)
- "You have found the Secret Cheat. Enter: 2FAST4U in the Single Player Name entry Screen for Intense game play. please power off the control deck and then power on the control deck to continue." ...can be found in the US ROM at offset 0xA5254, right after exception/error messages and format strings for displaying ex. the CPU register contents. Makes it likely to be some sort of crash handler, I guess? --Xdaniel 08:15, 16 February 2013 (EST)
Yep. That's the screen I saw. Is there another one? Considering that there were only two codes, they may have created another for other types of crashes, perhaps? The one I got may have been because of a dusty cartridge or pins (Diddy Kong Racing will sometimes freeze suddenly on my N64 and upon resetting gives me a debug error, and I have to reset again to play it again). The DKR freezes happen often, too. I think it may be because I entered a code that's supposed to display some type of debug info and cause the game freeze (I believe it was DODGYROMMER), but it happens pretty much each time I play the game the first time I turn it on. It disappears afterward, but I'm wandering WAY too far off-topic.
Glad to see some more info about this! Much appreciated for investigating! Perhaps I should try cartridge tilting to see if I can get the screen to re-appear? I'm a but worried if I will damage the cartridge if I were to do that, so I guess there's Project 64. --Daluigi208 12:01, 16 February 2013 (EST)
- This is definitely a thing. From this article (page 3, section Hex appeal):
I was a tester for The New Tetris on the N64. There was a crash that I could reproduce every time, which would display a dump of the registers just before locking up. You had to power cycle the N64 to get it to go away: even the reset key was unresponsive.
Version after version, the developer said the bug was fixed, and version after version I reproduced it. Closing in on the shipping deadline, the developer had to close out all crashing bugs in order to ship. (Testing is done by Nintendo even on third-party games, and Nintendo has to approve it.) But this bug would just not go away.
The game also had some unrelated secret codes you could enter to unlock various things. One day I joked that the developer should replace the hex dump screen with a screen that says "Congratulations! You have discovered a secret code! Turn your console off and back on, then enter the username HALUCI." So he did. And that's how it shipped.
- Anonymous (taken from Reddit replies to the original Dirty Coding Tricks article)
- Probably should be added to the article. (I was unable to find the original reddit comment though) --Pokechu22 (talk) 20:34, 17 August 2015 (EDT)
- I managed to capture the screen today (the quality is rather low, actual console through composite) and added the section (my first edit!). Should the capture remain a video, or should a screen cap replace it? --DrywallDreams (talk) 19:40, 23 August 2015 (EDT)
