The Galaga no-fire-cheat mystery (2012)
I don&#x27;t see how that could have been accidentally discovered. It is so esoteric and time consuming, that even if someone owned an arcade and could set the machine to free play, what kind of thought process from historical hacks prior to 1982 would have inspired that kind of a search space? Much like easter eggs in early Microsoft Office products from ca. 1990, I can&#x27;t imagine. Like maybe trying to run down a shot counter might have been on the agenda, but those two specific aliens just cinch it for me. Now, as to whether it is a bug or not.<p>Looking at the forensics of the original ROM at the provided URL[0], the fix is nontrivial. It looks like a bug, IMHO. But if it is a bug, who stumbled upon it? I would think that if the author put that in there to get the high score all the time, it certainly is obfuscated enough, but he would run the risk of being discovered. Perhaps the cheat is obfuscated in order to sneak it through code review and not be fired by Namco?<p>What really supports the bug theory is that the flight pattern of the far left bees has to be altered to account for their location on the screen. This REALLY feels like a bug, because when I&#x27;m trying to alter a corner case in code, I can rarely see the second-order consequences without code coverage&#x2F;fuzzing. This is a total code smell IMHO.<p>But again, how would someone even exploit this flaw without the ROM. Which leads me back to the intentional cheat by the programmer.<p>I&#x27;m legit ambivalent about this. But if I was pushed, I&#x27;d have to say it was an intentional cheat slipped into the code, because programmers were just too good back then.<p>TEAM CHEAT FTW.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerarcheology.com&#x2F;Arcade&#x2F;Galaga&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerarcheology.com&#x2F;Arcade&#x2F;Galaga&#x2F;</a>