Here is a technical issue that I found in Virtual Bowling, which I find very interesting. I found that if one resets the game by pressing L,R,A,B,Select,Start, then the starting position that is necessary to bowl a strike is shifted one pixel to the right from its usual place, assuming that one keeps all other elements, which gives one a strike, the same. I have also found that the problem compounds each time the game is reset using the aforementioned method, so if one resets the game twice using this method, then one must move to the right 2 more pixels than what one would move after freshly switching the game on from the “off” position.

I mentioned this problem to one of my friends who is a computer programmer, and he said that the problem sounds like the result of sloppy coding on the part of the game designers at Athena, where some variable isn’t reset properly when it should be, leading to “acceptable” but slightly off mechanics. Does this explanation sound right to all you technical experts? Can anyone else give a possible explanation for why this happens?

Another important thing to note, however, is that I play the game using a Rom on a FlashBoy+. I would like to know if someone who has an original cart can verify that this problem also occurs on original copies of the game. Chances are, though, that the same problem occurs on original carts, as it does on the Rom version, unless the Rom version that I’m using was somehow manipulated.

Cool info. Now I’m going to have to reset a couple dozen times so I can get a strike by hitting only the edge pin. 😛

Technically, the most I ever reset the game using the button method and tested that the starting position was shifted by a pixel each time was twice, so I personally saw that I had to move 2 more pixels to the right to get a strike after 2 soft resets. I’m assuming that it would keep going after that, but I haven’t personally seen it go beyond two.