Before he was President of Nintendo, before HAL Laboratory, Satoru Iwata was a Commodore fan who programmed games on his Commodore PET 2001. When he started with HAL, he made a Galaxian clone called Star Battle for the VIC-20 which was released in 1981. In that cartridge he hid a credits screen which hasn't been fully revealed until now, 42 years later.
Big thanks to Darren from Groo Tube for help with the thumbnail: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPynB8QjvQgbX2X5TwZX9QA
Also thanks to Jason Compton for wording suggestions!
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One-time donation: https://paypal.me/8BitShowAndTell
Links:
Ward Shrake's VIC-20 document where I probably first learned of the hidden text in Star Battle: http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/vic20/Cartzilla.html
Gaming Historian's video about Satoru Iwata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4cJh2YgrKE
Ending music is an unreleased instrumental version of "The NPC" by Bedford Level Experiment: https://bedfordlevelexperiment.bandcamp.com/
Index
0:00 A brief history of Satoru Iwata
1:58 Star Battle: Satoru Iwata's first commercial game
3:58 Using a RAM Expander and SuperMon to analyze the ROM
6:23 The easter egg text
9:24 Triggering the easter egg
10:22 How I found it: 1) The print routine
13:25 2) Finding the easter egg code
16:04 3) How to trigger it: keyscan routine
21:59 4) How to patch to restore key combo
24:05 How it was intended: the egg
25:44 Thanks to my patrons
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