When a player born in the 70s or 80s sees such a picture (as shown below), what is the standard operation?
- shut down;
- pops up the cassette;
- blows the air at the golden finger;
- (if necessary, even the jam slot is blown.)
As shown in the picture
In that era when the game console was still called a "precision instrument", due to the display error caused by poor contact between the cassette and the host, every boy in the world who finished his summer homework will more or less encounter it before starting to play games. Blowing into the cassette is like breathing a breath of a paper plane before takeoff, becoming a very reasonable ritual. Although blowing may not necessarily blow away dust, it will produce saliva, polluting gold fingers, but it works!
As the production process and materials improve, this kind of game error scene caused by physical problems gradually disappears from our perspective, and is replaced by various error messages caused by software or system operation errors.
The most well-known Microsoft famous quotes "This program performed illegal operations"
In fact, in that era, some game errors were expected by the development team. Because the results are controllable, imaginative programmers carefully prepared various ways to present these error images, even if they are very likely to not appear in front of players at all. We have explored some interesting examples to see how the games back then made these annoying error-reporting images more interesting.
From the anti-pirated version of Nintendo
Nintendo's FC disk system uses the Quick Disk floppy disk specifications of Sanmei Motor. It has a larger capacity than cassettes and can save game progress, but the price is cheaper than 3.5-inch or 5-inch floppy disks. The ability to write floppy disks repeatedly at will gave birth to the official recording service of Disk Writer. Players bring any genuine floppy disks of disk drives to the game store to use Disk Writer to copy other games, which only costs 500 yen. Some games also provide free envelopes and instructions. Although the disk drive peripherals cost 15,000 yen, the low price of buying games at 500 yen is quite affordable for children who are struggling with pocket money. As the advertisement says, FC is a dream game console.
Disk Writer equipment was set up in various parts of Japan by Nintendo. At its peak, the number was as high as 3,200 units, but currently only the last one is left and is kept at Nintendo headquarters.
"Super Mario Brothers 2" has completely blank side, so you can copy another game
without covering the original game, but things always have A and B sides, and unrestricted random rewritten also makes this carrier possible to be pirated. Nintendo designed physical anti-pirated measures with the word NINTENDO on the shell for disk games. Floppy disks without etching the word NINTENDO will not be inserted into the host. Nintendo does not sell blank floppy disks. The premise for players to use Disk Writer is to buy at least one genuine disk game (usually priced around 3,000 yen), but these are difficult players with extremely strong hands-on skills. This design is quickly hand-modified or broken through third-party compatible floppy disks.
The black bar is the device used in the disk drive to "detect" genuine floppy disks. If it is removed, it will fail
Of course, Nintendo is not just a physical anti-pirated version of the game. There are several games that have added detection codes to identify whether the player uses the original disk or whether it is a game burned on the Disk Writer specified by Nintendo. If the detection fails, some special error screens will be displayed.
For example, in the Fuji TV peripheral game "Dreamworks" produced by Nintendo, if it is detected that it is not the original game or is not copied on Disk Writer, the prompt "Please use the official Disk Writer store" will appear.
I'm sorry, of course I can't "show it off" without money
Because the Japanese version of "Super Mario Brothers 2" is too difficult, Nintendo, North America, replaced "Dreamworks ドロドパック" with NES version "Super Mario Brothers 2"
Square 's JRPG "Morning Cave Warriors: The Emblem of the Warriors" After detecting that the player has used a non-authentic copy, it will tell you that this game only costs 3,400 yen to buy it. The implication may be a bit sarcastic.
"The Warrior's Emblem is priced at 3,400 yen and is being released!!"
In another Square's game "3D Three-dimensional World Runner" (the Japanese version is called "とびだせ Grand Battle"), the developers are more warm. They thank the players for their love for this game and hope that players can go to the regular game store to buy this game and play it.
"Thank you very much for your favor with our game. I'm sorry you can't use this illegal copy, but there is a good news that you can buy this game in a nearby game store." The "NASIR" in the signature is Nasir Giberi, an Iranian programmer of this game. He participated in the production of famous works such as "Final Fantasy" and " Legend of the Holy Sword " and other famous works
With the development of technology, the game ROM has been continuously expanded, and large-capacity cassettes and cassettes with special chips to enhance sound quality and batteries to save records have appeared. The floppy disk that is easy to magnetize, difficult to save, and cannot be upgraded has a development bottleneck. At this time, Nintendo also ushered in a strong competitor - NEC's new console PC Engine.
PCE's tricks are wrong
PCE has an 8-Bit CPU and a 16-Bit GPU. In the era of 8-bit and 16-bit replacement, it has brought players an experience comparable to arcades. Because of this, PCE, as a home host, has many opportunities to debut in the arcade-themed cartoon "High Score Girl". Unlike other hosts, PCE has been constantly updated and iterating over the past 8 years, launching many upgraded models and peripherals, and also launching various game carriers (including HuCard and CD-ROM²), which has caused trouble for compatibility.
PCE models and peripherals with different appearances
probably have so many...
PCE early models only supported running HuCard cassette games, and later added CD-ROM² extension to support running CD-ROM games, which also made PCE the first home host in the gaming industry that supports CD-ROM. However, using CD-ROM² peripherals requires a HuCard called "System Card" to be inserted into the host, which is used as an optical drive BIOS boot and RAM expansion. The system cards are divided into 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, Arcade and other versions. The host of the later DUO model has built-in 3.0 version system card functions, and the Arcade card is also divided into PRO and DUO models to adapt to the initial host and the late DUO host respectively. Different games have minimum system card version requirements, and some even can only run on specific versions of system cards.
In a nutshell, it means that running CD games requires the corresponding version of the system card, so it is right that PCE is very powerful.
If the CD-ROM² CD is placed in computer optical drive , or if the wrong version of the system card is used, the game cannot run, an error screen will be played. It may be that the wrong system card is common, and developers are paying more and more attention to the fun of the error report screen. From the beginning, the most standard female voice broadcasts have gradually become integrated with the game. Because the PCE-CD capacity is large enough, there are also many RPG game , so voice actor dubbing and static pictures or animation short dramas that are innately filmed with RPG have become the standard configuration for error-reporting pictures.
Most of the time you see pictures with text and voice commentary like "R-Type" - the system card version is wrong
"Lost World" borrows the store interface in the game. Only the correct version of the system card shows "in stock"
In addition to the beauty, of course, there are also brothers with ten abdominal muscles...
In addition to this, there is also a unique development team that plays a unique and beautiful game. The RPG game "Star Breaker" specializes in playing a small easter egg that is more welfare-oriented. If the PCE backup peripheral capacity is insufficient, a short video of peeking and failing to take a bath will be played.The two people who peeked at
were knocked unconscious on the ground - "Insufficient Backup Memory"
The key parts of
are coded cleverly echoing the "Insufficient Memory". If you want to see, release the memory!
The famous prequel work of "html August Night Night Samantabha " - "Castle of Devils: Blood Reincarnation", even directly reported an error in the system card version and made it into a mini game. Although the whole game is that players use the Q version of Richter to walk to the bottom of the STAGE X level and see an error, it is at least an interactive error reporting interface.
"Castificate: Dracula Peke", Peke is the Roman word in Japanese "ぺ�", meaning "error" and "fork". This mini game was also included in the PSP 3D remake of "Castificate: Blood Reincarnation" in "Castificate: Blood Reincarnation". In "Castificate: Blood Reincarnation",
STAGE X also has the iconic STAGE introduction words for "Blood Reincarnation".
The text you see when you walk to the bottom is: "This CD-ROM disc is a SUPER CD-ROM² dedicated game software, and requires SUPER SYSTEM CARD to be used."
"Angel Poem" RPG game is even more ruthless: "Angel Poem 2: The Choice of the Fallen Angel" is a PCE released in 1993. CD-ROM game, but it was discovered that the error was reported after 24 years. A serious vertical STG game "Dark Left" was hidden in the screen.
uses the wrong version of the system card, and the system displays a warning screen. The warning screen also imitates the RPG game interface
At this time, press ↑↓↓ in turn, and then press the I and II keys at the same time to start this hidden STG game
. It feels pretty good!
is not just PCE, but other hosts using CD-ROMs, such as PlayStation and SEGA Saturn, may more or less cause players to accidentally put the disk into the CD or computer optical drive. In this case, there will also be error messages for voice broadcasts.
GB family
In addition to PCE, Game Boy, which seems to be quite powerful in compatibility, actually has this problem: Game Boy Color is backward compatible with GB, and some two-way compatible GBC cartridges can also be used on GB, but the color transparent GBC special cartridges can generally only be used on GBC. There is a clamp on the first-generation brick GB power switch, which can just jamm the gap in the cassette to prevent the cassette from being pulled out during the game operation. Most GBC special cassettes have no gaps, and they cannot be turned on even if they are inserted into GB. In fact, this is also a compatible anti-blind design. The
switch is also a clip that fixes the cassette, which is a great anti-dust design!
Most of the GBC dedicated cassettes have no gaps, but "Gong Gun Kabi" is an exception
However, there are no such clips for GB Light, GB Pocket and Super Game Boy. Therefore, if you insert the GBC dedicated cassette and turn on the computer, the game will display an error screen. Since the capacity of GB cassettes is not particularly large, the error report screen is basically simple - in one sentence, at most one picture is added.
GBC special cassette error report screen
If you use technical means to deceive the detection code of these GBC cassettes and make them think they are plugged in GBC, but they are actually running in GB? Due to memory addressing, the game will have problems. At the least, the picture and sound will be wrong, and at the worst, the game will be frozen.
"Super Mario Brothers Deluxe Edition", although the flower screen is actually a
. If in turn, it deceives the two-way compatible GBC cassettes to make them think they are plugged in GB but they are actually running with GBC. In theory, you should get a picture like playing GB cassettes on GBC, but in fact there will be problems.
is shown in the third vertical column in the figure. In some serious games, even the screen will be completely white.
Neo. The mining
in Geo is far from the question. Let's go back to the interesting error report screen itself. SNK, the color screen handheld console launched immediately after GBC, also has the same compatibility problem. Its predecessor, the black and white screen Neo Geo Pocket, is completely incompatible with color cassettes.
Neo Geo Pocket series is known as the "best handheld" handheld console for the use of micro-shock sticks
" King of Fighters : Battle De Paradise" is a table game similar to "Monopoly". The game uses the characters in "King of Fighters", but the content has nothing to do with fighting, and it is very easy to do. The developer of this game hides a very historical mini game in this NGPC game. If the game cassette is inserted into NGP and boots up, the cassette that was originally unusable will run a mini tree-cutting game, and this tree-cutting game actually has a big background.
"This game is exclusive to NGPC, and cannot be used on black and white screens... right?" There are also foreshadowing of the error text!
Then an old game title appeared! Even the company name at the bottom uses the "New Japan Project" (the full name of SNK)
Hefeng's "Brow Hai Cut Woodcutting"? It's not that complicated, it's just cutting down small animals and trees
The game is called "Yosaku", which is a remake of SNK's 1979 arcade game. Although "Yizhu" has transplanted Cassette Vision and X68000 in the past few decades and has reborn as "KIKORI" and has been reborn and logged on to iOS, the first generation of arcades is actually very rare: the ROM does not have Dump, the substrate body is completely missing, and there is very little remaining information. Even Digital Ecplise, which cooperated with SNK to develop the "SNK 40th Anniversary Collection", could not find this game, and instead posted on Twitter for help from netizens.
SNK celebrated the 40th anniversary of the founding of the society this year. "Works" is their second year of founding of the society, which is quite old.
Conclusion
As the host and handheld consoles have joined the operating system, various forms of error reporting information were later taken over by the system. While ensuring the accurate and rigorous information transmission, it also closed this secret base for developers to fully play their imagination and play. Although no matter how classic the game or the excellent producer is, people's love for the game is like the hidden code in these "errors", and will always stay in the world.
