Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Game Boy Zelda Comes With Source, Sort Of

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hate-when-that-happens dept.

Jamie found a fun story about a 90s Zelda Game Boy ROM that shipped with the source code- not so much on purpose, but more because the linker padded out the last meg of ROM with random memory contents, which happened to include game source code.

4 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Not too uncommon by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the 'Elite' sequels was shipped with a swap file on the CD-ROM. Opening that swap file with a text editor showed it included much of the C code for the game, which presumably must have been swapped out while they were compiling at some point and then copied to the CD by mistake.

    From what I remember the installer copied the swap file to the hard disk, but the first patch either deleted it or zeroed it :).

    1. Re:Not too uncommon by vranash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Having that game (Which was actually Bethesda's Sea Dogs 2 rebadged before release.) It had a *TON* of files with it, although I think they were lua-scripts or something, not actual c-code. Regardless they had a lot of options available in them for modifying core components of the game. You could change your characters starting stats, name, ship type, etc. Given the somewhat frustrating land-side swordplay, I ended up having more fun tweaking the game than playing it.

      Having reminded me, I may have to dig it out sometime soon and see what else it's got going.

  2. There's more by Kayamon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Golden Axe 2 (the arcade ROM) has a good chunk of it's source code contained in there too, including the source for it's security routine (oh the hilarity...)

    And the PAL version of ICO (PS2) had an objdump of the entire ELF on the disc, which is basically a disassembly with full symbol information.

    --
    Kayamon
  3. FoxPro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Posted anonymously to hide my shame of working with visual FoxPro.

    FoxPro, I discovered after shipping our product for 2 years, didn't really compile anything when you made an .exe It just included a runtime and the source code in the .exe file. If you looked at it ina hex editor, there was the full source code, complete with comments. Apparently there was an option to scramble the source code. The guy responsible for building the installation didn't do that.