Retro Game Internals: Punch-Out Passwords

http://tomorrowcorporation.com/posts/retro-game-internals-punch-out-passwords

by jeff18 • 11 years ago

37 5 11 years ago

jlees• 11 years ago

An interesting read; there's something really nice about the way older games do things (like this saved state encoding, or anti-cheat by referring to certain pages in the manual. In this age of cloud save (and I say this having worked on a cloud save product!), we've lost a level of connection here.

I was intrigued as to how one would even figure out the sequence of operations used to encode progress into a 'phone number'; a quick search turned up an in-depth report (http://www.dougbabcock.com/mtpo-passwords.txt) which doesn't appear to be credited in Allan's article. It looks like Doug used a password archive to figure out the steps as an exercise in cracking, which itself sounds jolly fun.

Sanddancer• 11 years ago

Amusing how the three busy signal codes correspond to Nintendo's customer service lines for Japan, the US Toll Free, and Washington State. 135 792 4680 is obvious, but it makes me curious as to significance of the show credits and direct to Tyson numbers. Especially in that era, hard-coded numbers were rarely completely random. It's a bit interesting and amusing how 30 years later, these games still have stories to tell.

kalleboo• 11 years ago

135 792 4680 is obvious

It's not obvious to me, could you explain?

haar• 11 years ago

Odd progression, even progression.

Luc• 11 years ago

"106 113 0120 – Shows credits"

I think this might be Japanese NTT phone numbers/prefixes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Japan

106 Operator assisted collect call service

113 NTT technical faults hotline

0120 NTT Freedial, toll free services

Retro Game Internals: Punch-Out Passwords

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