Original Post

In the UFO pinball machine, the game locks up when you reach a score higher than 120 mil and get the jackpot. I have tried it with an original cart and with the Flashboy, both came out with the same problem!

Here is a picture with the original cart (is this usable as a highscore screenshot btw?):
((made a mistake and deleted the right screenie :/))
And a youtube link so that you can see it is for real:
Movie Original cart

Here with the Flashboy:

And a youtube link so that you can see it is for real:
Movie Flashboy

As you can see, the game sounds still play, there is no pause in the screen though the real game hangs. Never knew that Nintendo would let a bug like this slip through! Now I can’t get higher than this lol!

What do you guys think about this?

  • This topic was modified 14 years, 10 months ago by TheForce81.
20 Replies

So you were able to reproduce the crash? I wonder, because both your screenshot, which are from two different sessions with the original cart and a FlashBoy, show exactly the same score, remaining pucks and scenery, which seems a bit unlikely.

And yes, this screenshot is OK to submit with your highscore.

EDIT: OK, by watching the videos I can see that you were actually able to reproduce that. Unbelieveable that nobody at Nintendo noticed that yet. Does the game only hang if you get the jackpot or is it completely impossible to get more than a certain score?

Maybe someone should play that far in Red Dragon (because of the save state support) and see if the bug is reproduceable on the emulator as well and what happens in memory in that moment.

I made a mistake with the screenshot :/. I deleted the screenshot of the original cart instance. It only happened with the jackpot, though only above the amount of 120 mil. And reproducing that is hard lol, I never really tried getting a higher score without doing the jackpot because it is very hard to get that amount of points ;). Though getting the jackpot in Cosmic doesn’t present me with this problem.

Too bad I deleted the original cart screenie, as it had 133 mil points….. Is a video good enough as a screenie πŸ˜› ?

Well, you can try to grab a good frame from the video where you can read the score.

Does it lock up on other Virtual Boy units as well?

Perhaps it can be reproduced in Reality Boy as well, is it possible to change data in the debugger version and then keep on playing?

e5frog wrote:
Does it lock up on other Virtual Boy units as well?

Perhaps it can be reproduced in Reality Boy as well, is it possible to change data in the debugger version and then keep on playing?

I have one other glitchy screen VB laying around, but the VB I tested it on seems to be rock solid (the non glitschy screen one). Never had any problems whatsoever and since the audio keeps running I highly doubt it is a problem with this unit.

I doubt it too, but it would be interesting to make sure.

Perhaps there are also (not yet dumped) different software versions – without the bug?

To me it seems unlikely that Nintendo, if they found the bug, cared enough about the VB to release a second, v1.1 batch of Galactic Pinball. Would be cool, though.

BTW, efrog, you could’ve used the edit function to append to your previous post. Makes it easier to browse the thread with less big boxes. πŸ˜‰

e5frog wrote:
I doubt it too, but it would be interesting to make sure.

Damit! Now you have me wanting to test this as well lol, and getting that score is not too easy! Ahh well, it is connected and ready for some action now…..

You could probably make short work of it by using Red Dragon in cheat mode to find the memory location of the score, use a cheat to give you 120 million, save your state (so you can come right back), then get the jackpot, then save another state and post them here for others to play with.

IIRC Galactic Pinball is playable in RD.

DogP

I know how to use edits, but in this case I wanted to make a fresh reply due to the test I just did. I used a different VB and it STILL froze up! Though it froze up on the jackpot once again (this time on 139 mil and made a new screenie! :P) it is definitely a bug in the game!!

you should probably take it back to the store you bought it from and get a refund.

So it’s confirmed, good work! (How did you get 139 million that fast? :-D)

Now we should try the same thing on the emulator and look for strange behaviours. Maybe it can be patched?

I guess I’ll be the first… first reading this thread, I expected this (image attached).

BTW, it seems that this was already known, or similarly experienced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Pinball . It says just breaking 100 mil locks up though. I suck at the game, so I’ve definitely never had it happen.

It would be pretty funny to email Nintendo about the bug to see what kind of response they give.

DogP

Attachments:

“The max score on this level was 99,999,999 as there was no slot for the 100 million digit.”

What? o_O

Anyway, I found a semi useful cheat which gives you 6 Mio Bonus whenever you lose a puck. In combination with the infinite pucks cheat this can be used to get high scores quickly.

CT: 6 Mio Lost Bonus
CC: 0-00071a0-FFFF
CC: 0-00071a1-FFFF

Here’s a 155 Mio save state. Something seems to be wrong, though, since the UFO seems to be not moving anymore. o_O

DogP wrote:
I guess I’ll be the first… first reading this thread, I expected this (image attached).

BTW, it seems that this was already known, or similarly experienced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Pinball . It says just breaking 100 mil locks up though. I suck at the game, so I’ve definitely never had it happen.

It would be pretty funny to email Nintendo about the bug to see what kind of response they give.

DogP

:rolleyes Actually YOU knew about it eight years ago! I had a conversation about it with you and KR155E on the GameFAQs message board. There was a topic about how few bugs there were in VB games and I mentioned my game locked up when I scored 147,537,500 points. Another poster (can’t remember who) said that the game regularly locks up when you break 100,000,000.

At least now we know exactly what causes it, maybe I should update my FAQ…

Brian

Heheheh… wow, how much I forget in 8 years πŸ˜‰ .

DogP

jojobean wrote:
you should probably take it back to the store you bought it from and get a refund.

I guess that OR you are making a joke, OR you did not read all of this thread. It is a bug in the game altogether, doesn’t have to do with the VB or the cartridge as I tried it on different VB’s with different cartridges.

Yeah, the bug is definitely confirmed, “nice” to see that the emu has the problem as well and others can confirm it too!

Edit:
So if you wouldn’t go for the jackpot you could probably get higher scores, nice to know πŸ˜›

KR155E wrote:

BTW, efrog, you could’ve used the edit function to append to your previous post. Makes it easier to browse the thread with less big boxes. πŸ˜‰

I noticed too late, and there’s no delete function so I couldn’t repair my mistake. πŸ˜‰

 

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