Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Peer Johannsen

Weird Science - Tales from the Vectrex Academy Lab

Vectrex Project Title

  • An analysis of the original Spinball cartridge and source code

Project Status

  • Ongoing research

Synopsis

  • Digital Archeology - An investigation of the Spinball cartridge
  • After discovering the Easter Egg in Star Ship (programmer's name appearing on the screen, see here), it was a logical choice next to investigate one of other games written by Mark Indictor.
  • I chose Spinball because, and please correct me if I am wrong, I did not find any cheats or Easter Eggs mentioned for that game anywhere on the web.
  • As it turned out, Spinball also contains a hidden way to show the programmer's credentials.

Easter Egg

  • Spinball was coded by Mark Indictor, and he coded a nice and witty mechanism to reveal a bit about himself:
  • If you finish the game and achieve a new high-score, and if the last five digits of your score happen to be 91755, then name MARK INDICTOR will appear at the bottom of the screen:

    

  • Why a score of 91755? My personal guess is that Mark was born on September 17th, 1955 :-)
  • I have not yet been able to check if this Easter Egg is also contained in Flipper / Pinball, as I do not have a file of its binary. If someone has such, please contact me.
  • To be continued...

Credits

  • Again, this analysis would not have been possible without Vide.
  • Many thanks to Malban for once more adding tons of new features I suggested or asked for.

Author

  • Peer Johannsen

Latest modification on 04/29/2023, 15:00
  • Page created