Games that intentionally reset your Speccy (or faked it)

[PeteProdge]

Some of you may know that in How To Be A Complete Bas**rd, if your character resets the computer in it, then your actual ZX Spectrum would genuinely reset.

Pressing BREAK on Colony's menu screen would, at first glance, reset then immediately turn your Speccy into a Commodore 64 - albeit a parody ("Commode 64"). You could easily return to the game at the press of any key, thankfully.

Were there any other Speccy games doing things like this?

[8BitAG]

Several text adventures reset (or pretended to reset) the computer if you swore.

Some examples at: https://www.monkeon.co.uk/swearadventure/

[Turtle_Quality]

Didn't Brian Bloodaxe do a fake restart when it finished loading ?

Regarding responding to swearing in adventures, I'm sure I remember one text adventure punishing me for swearing when I typed "Break window" - apparently it truncated all input words to 4 letters

[8BitAG]

Regarding responding to swearing in adventures, I'm sure I remember one text adventure punishing me for swearing when I typed "Break window" - apparently it truncated all input words to 4 letters

Yes, that was Robin of Sherlock, iirc. One of Fergus McNeill's games... he'd put in an anti-swear routine to placate Boots The Chemist, who were threatening not to stock the game after parental complaints about Bored of the Rings... unfortunately, like you say, it's a four letter parser and there was at least one section where BREAKing a WINDow made a lot of sense as something to try!

[spider]

I liked the border effect if you used profanity in Project X actually. So much so I later went looking and borrowed the routine out, its only a thin multicoloured border effect with a 'white-noise'

Urban Upstart used to get you arrested for this, although there was no check if you were inside a building or not ( a useful ploy to escape from the hospital if one had lost a white coat ) , in my opinion it should of had a "is player outside if so arrest them" check.

Seem to recall one game arcade possibly would do a white border / black paper then display the 1982 Copyright message for a second or two with something like a "fooled you" message after. Can't remember which game! Not seen that for many years.

[TMD2003]

We, the Xtardans*, have just shot your commander. We are a nasty bunch, and we do horrible things. LIKE THIS, FOR INSTANCE:

(bye!)

*black screen*

© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd

...and there I was, aged eight, thinking "WHAT JUST HAPPENED THERE?"

I'd borrowed a book about the Spectrum from the local library when I was still stuck with a 1K ZX81, just to see what I was missing out on, so I knew this was the original startup message. But on a +2, it wasn't, because Lord Yes Sir Alan "You're Fired!" Sugar deemed that it should say "© 1982 Amstrad" instead.

Ho ho! Bet that scared you!

Had I had anything from a rubber-key to a toastrack, it might have done. And then, eventually I'd have noticed that the bottom two lines of the screen don't turn black, and there's no red vertical lines on the black screen either, as there should be when the Spectrum resets.

The game was written in BASIC with a for machine code sound effects, but...

How hard can it be?

...to make an accurate simulation of the crashing process in machine code without actually crashing?


* who are ABSOLUTELY NOT KLINGONS AT ALL, even though this was an early-Spectrum port of Star Trek, the "Starfire" is a carbon copy of the Starship Enterprise, and the variable for how many Xtardans are in a sector is "kli".

[bluespikey]

Stonkers

And Rebelstar

[Joefish]

I did wonder if, since pressing the RESET button just restarts the processor to run from address 0 in the ROM, is any code you loaded still present in the RAM? (Before the ROM startup does its RAM test and wipes it all).

I remember the Atari ST had a RESET vector that you could redirect, so that if the computer was restarting from a reset you could make it run some custom code (which was still in memory).

[AndyC]

Presumably it would be. On the SAM Coupe it was possible to display a screen when the reset button was pressed because the display mode and paging registers would get reset back to the default whilst the reset button was held down, so as long as you'd set it up right the screen would display until the reset button was released and the RAM cleared by the startup code.

[PeteProdge]

...Sir Alan "You're Fired!" Sugar deemed that it should say "© 1982 Amstrad" instead.

Speaking of which, did that message carry any legal weight?

Yes, I know Amstrad Consumer Electronics plc bought the rights to the ZX Spectrum, but the retroactive copyright message? Surely "© 1986 Amstrad" is technically correct?

If company X takes over company Y, is it right for company X to plonk retroactive copyright on company Y's legacy material?

[Joefish]

Well, since they changed the message within the ROM it made for a new version of the ROM image, which they could then assert their copyright of!

[AndyC]

The presence (or lack) of the copyright sign doesn't actually change the legal status at all, so it doesn't really matter. Amstrad owned the copyrights to the ROM at that point and they stretched back to 1982, so it's not entirely wrong.

[zup]

I did wonder if, since pressing the RESET button just restarts the processor to run from address 0 in the ROM, is any code you loaded still present in the RAM? (Before the ROM startup does its RAM test and wipes it all).

I remember the Atari ST had a RESET vector that you could redirect, so that if the computer was restarting from a reset you could make it run some custom code (which was still in memory).

Yes, everything is on RAM when you press reset or go to address 0 (using call, reset, ret, rst 0 or everything you think of). The problem is that (at least in 16k and 48k) there is no way to prevent the ROM from testing (and erasing) the RAM.

On a 128k model pressing reset will reset the CPU and the paging circuits, so you'll jump to 0 in the ROM 0 (Editor). Note that if you jump to 0 with BASIC ROM paged, you'll lose everything on RAM 5, RAM 2 and whatever RAM was paged... you will be able to access the data on other RAM pages but (due to jumping to the BASIC ROM) your program won't be able to continue.

OTOH the NMI routine seems to be intended to jump to an address specified in the system variables (address 23728) but it's bugged and resets the computer.

[1024MAK]

I did wonder if, since pressing the RESET button just restarts the processor to run from address 0 in the ROM, is any code you loaded still present in the RAM? (Before the ROM startup does its RAM test and wipes it all).

Yes.

In fact the Z80 processor when it receives a RESET, does not even clear all it’s internal registers. The only reason that the contents of RAM is lost, is due to the actions of the ROM program.

Mark

[1024MAK]

Speaking of which, did that message carry any legal weight?

As I understand it, when Amstrad were in the process of buying the Sinclair computers section of Sinclair Research Ltd, Sinclair did not actually own the copyright to all of the ROM code. Apparently Amstrad contacted the authors and made suitable legal arrangements.

Mark

[Juan F. Ramirez]

That's the Spirit has, among the loooong list of playing keys one that causes a false reset.

[XTM]

Even though it wasn't a reset, I once made a crappy BASIC demo where at one point, it said it was going to format the disk in drive 1 after 5 seconds and then it would display the "official" Speccy error message for "No disk in drive" or whatever it says. Nothing special on its own, I only mention it because of the day I went to a Dutch Speccy meeting to spread said demo, and observed this guy from afar who ran this demo and when that message came up, I watched with glee as he panically went for the disk eject button

[R-Tape]

I went to a Dutch Speccy meeting to spread said demo, and observed this guy from afar who ran this demo and when that message came up, I watched with glee as he panically went for the disk eject button

Haha brill. The thread has come full circle!

...How To Be A Complete Bas**rd...

[XTM]

Yeah, I was a bar steward then alright. Not meaning to steer this off-topic too much, but this is a good time to make a confession. Sorry for it being a bit lengthy.

We (that is, The Mad Guys aka TMG) had a rival demo group in Germany back then called The Unbelievables, also abbreviated UVS. Hanging out at one of my group member's place the night before a Speccy club meeting hosted by the head honcho of the UVS, I had this idea to make a bit of fun of them. I started out by drawing a very ugly picture in Art Studio and built a primitive BASIC demo with horrible music and butchered English full of mistakes around it. This masterpiece was officially the new UVS demo
I named it The Final Strike, an expression I'd seen in one of their demos and which sounded epic enough as a title for a product that was decidedly not epic whatsoever.
SC entry, YouTube video.

Did I stop there? Yeah, right ...

The Final Strike part 2 was apparently "coded" by Talisman, who wasn't even a member of the UVS, but of my very own group (which was pretty much falling apart at the time) ... but he lived fairly close to the UVS guys so I just pretended he had jumped ship.
SC entry, YouTube video

Final Strike 3 was indeed the penultimate strike. This time the authorship was given back to a proper UVS member and they had earned a sponsorship by a big German TV station. I'd like to point out the maze game after the first part, which is actually slightly fun to play (some friend who had nothing to do with the Speccy had enjoyed it immensely) and curiously has a flawless English description in contrast to the mangled English used elsewhere in the series. I also love how in the video linked below, the one who recorded it totally failed on his first try and probably just went "ah, sod it"
No SC entry but it is on zxaaa ... YouTube video

[R-Tape]

Ta for sharing that brilliant story @XTM (you scoundrel!). Hopefully you and the Unbelievables can share a bier and have a laugh about it now.

I've created a new ID for Final Strike 3, with The Mad Guys as publisher/author (correct?). Parts 1 and 2 in the series will be ammended and commented on to reflect this.

Actually - should all three of the Final Strikes have 'The Mad Guys' as publisher, and Xterminator as author?

✓ PROCESSED DH 17/08/22

[XTM]

Umm ... I guess it won't do any harm to put me as the author. It's not like Thomas Eberle (aka Ebi of the UVS, the Sintech/Speccyman/Speccy35+40 guy) is gonna sue me after so many years

By the way ... after you finish the maze game in The Final Strike 3, it will do something very relevant to the thread title, so this whole anecdote was sorta on-topic after all

[PeterJ]

Slightly off topic for which I apologise, but there is a version of Linux which formats your hard disk if you type a command incorrectly!

https://github.com/tiagoad/suicide-linux

[Stu]

Bounder does a fake reset when it gets to the end of the menu screen scrolling message if you load it like this (which enables the cheat mode)

Code: Select all

POKE 23296,12: LOAD ""

[Ralf]

I believe in Stormbringer (or was it another Magic Knight game) there is a section were you can cast spells. And there is a spell called "Quitus gamus" which, yes, resets the Spectrum.

I remember I used it once mindlessly to check what will happen and was quite surprised

[Alessandro]

I believe in Stormbringer (or was it another Magic Knight game) there is a section were you can cast spells. And there is a spell called "Quitus gamus" which, yes, resets the Spectrum.

I remember I used it once mindlessly to check what will happen and was quite surprised

Hmm... Not exactly, the spell was called Quiticus Gamus and it quit the game with a message saying

I SUPPOSE YOU REALISED
THAT THIS IS A SPELL
TO QUIT THE GAME BUT
PRESSING THE BREAK KEY
IS MUCH QUICKER!

After that, the game went back to the main menu - no reset at all

Edit: I just noticed this...

That's the Spirit has, among the loooong list of playing keys one that causes a false reset.

It was the SWEAR command, that had to be used only once to get rid of the aged woman. It generated a false reset with a caption warning you not to swear at strangers when used first time before meeting the woman. You also had to avoid using it in the church because you would not have been able to enter it any more.