Dirt Bike

Dirt Bike is a simple game for Mac OS Classic with pretty impressive physics for 1995.

Hidden Text#

The following message appears in the file for the map "Watch That Drop", in the area used for high score ghosts. When the player records a high score on this track, the message will be overwritten with race data.

The curly quotes in the text were garbled by cross-platform transmission; they are restored below.

>One of our journeys (a short one) took us to Aigues-Mortes a medieval
>town about 40 kilometers to the southeast of us. Aigues-Mortes is a
>walled city. The walls were built completely around the city in the 13th
>century. At that time most of the houses there were made of wood. now
>they are made of the white limestone you see all over the place.The now
>in the last sentence refers to the 16th century which is when wood was
>replaced with white limestone.You see houses like this all over the
>place in the little villages. After 400 years of weathering, the
>limestone acquires some abstract textural features and makes them
>‘appear’ (at least to me) more charming and even older. Anyway it is the
>walls that are the major attraction. They totally surround the city
>almost forming a rectangle. They are 36 feet high and 8 feet thick. You
>can walk all the way around the top for a small fee (32FF).Since there
>is only one way up and one way down which no one tells you, you have to
>walk all the way around once you’ve walked halfway and realize that..
>and I can personally tell you the journey around the top is 5,379 feet
>and if you are taking a 3 year old and a 5 year old, you make the
>journey several times.There are 10 gates and 5 towers, most of which you
>can go in and challenge your ability to negotiate spiral stairways
>without railings.It is a kick to imagine guys running around up here
>with bows and arrows, maybe hot oil...It is fun to view the construction
>and try to determine intent, some things are readily distinct like the
>slots for the arrows, the fireplaces in the towers and gates, the double
>slots for doors where the gates are with the opening above between the
>two gates (I would not want to be caught between the gates), then there
>were the baseball sized round holes in a concave carved section of the
>wall...Peeping toms maybe? One of my favorite items of the construction
>is the toilets (Freud can appreciate this). Basically they are one hole
>seats built into the walls, with the seat overhanging the outside so the
>person seated faces inside). Of course the output goes outside.Someone
>has to clean this up,or else no one goes in that area.It is also noted,
>these openings in the wall can also be used for defense...I shudder to
>think of the weaponry.Some of the “toilets” have ceilings and others are
>open. none of them have doors or any thing like that.I’ve done the wall
>at Aigues-Mortes twice now (there should be a T-shirt that says that),
>on the 2nd trip around, I noticed that someone took leave in one of the
>toilets. Now that is communing with the past.One thing I liked, but did
>not know until the end of my first wall tour was that workers put their
>‘marks’ on the stones so they could get paid. On the second trip round,
>I noticed more of these marks. Made me wonder who the men were. Did they
>work on other construction in the area (of course it took 25 years to
>build the wall). I wondered how many different marks there were ... etc.
>There is probably a thesis in there if it has not already been done. The
>history of the area is rife with religious connections. I feel so
>uneducated and uninformed when visiting some of these places.King Louis
>IX (eventually Saint Louis (not the city)) left on 2 crusades from
>Aigues-Mortes. Once in 1248 to fight the Turks who had taken hold of the
>Holy Land, and again never to return in 1270 on a crusade to Africa (I
>don’t know who he was fighting then). He died of typhus.Imagine the
>ships setting sail for these crusdaes, men, horses, and gear all on the
>same ship. It turns out each man had a chest for his belongings, which
>when opened also served as his bed.(talk about living out of your
>suitcase).If they sailed during a rainy period, all remained below
>deck...don’t need much of an imagination for those conditions.Every year
>the departure of Saint Louis is reenacted I think in May and October. We
>gotta see that.Note the holy see resided in Avignon, which is not far
>from Aigues-Mortes. Another timeof religious strife occurred in the 17th
>century when the Edict of Nantes was revoked.this led to the persecution
>of protestants in the area and some Calvinist Huguenots were imprisoned
>in one very conspicuous (for miles) tower at one corner of the wall.
>The tower is around 100 feet tall and offers views in all directions.
>Matt really liked being on the roof as he called it. Dale and I were
>constantly gasping as the wall lacked foritications at several
>spots to keep 3 year olds and the like in .You could see the entire city
>of Augies-Mortes from the tower. At one point protestant women were
>imprisoned in the tower for at least 30-40 years. One woman, Marie
>Durand was steadfast in her faith as she was kept there for 38 years
>(being freed in 1768). She left some graffitti on the floor, it was
>“Register” which means “Resist” (something got lost in the translation
>on that one).Matt say the glass cover over the “Register” and realized
>he could put his foot underneath... I could just see my son erasing a
>200+ year old legacy of stalwart resistence and history..From some of
>the history you get a deeper appreciation of what it meant to be a
>believer and how powerful the faith was of many people. Unfortunately in
>some cases to a detriment when it came to implementation (look up
>Cathars)...Guess there are two lessons to be learned. No wonder so many
>took the chance to come to America. Aigues-Mortes means dead waters...
>the town was built in marsh lands and was not very far from the sea in
>the 1200s, but the Rhone and Petite Rhone pile up silt, the town has
>been distanced from the sea and has little to offer now as a
>port.However from the walls and the tower, you can see these huge pools
>of salt water which appear almost mauve in color.The salt pools at
>Aigues-Mortes supply 50% of France’s salt.The manufacture of salt takes
>over 3 years from the pumping of the water into the salt ponds from the
>sea to the eventual harvesting of the salt.You should see the piles of
>salt... 80 feet high and probably covering a football field.We saw a
>truck driving along one of the pools taking off the top layer and
>putting it into another truck...The ponds are 20cm to 50cm deep and the
>water is slowly flowed from one pond to another to concentrate the
>salt.Finally being harvested after 3 years flowing some 60kms (36
>miles). The production of salt in the area dates back several centuries
>BC when the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans were the salt traders. Turns
>out this salt was really handy when there were a lot of bodies left in
>the tower after one battle... they ended up being salted to keep the
>smell down. The town is fairly small, there are the ubiquitious cafes
>and the shops. there is a really nice square with some moderately
>expensive sea food restaurants aroun the perimeter. The boys were
>entranced by a street entertainer at one cafe who was dressed in a
>futuristic silver colored outfit doing mime and slow motion ‘humor’ with
>new age melodies playing in the background as he moved amoung the people
>at the tables of one cafe.... before passing the hat. There was another
>guy who painted his face gold and then put on a gold robe and just stood
>there face down, eyes closed looking at a tin can. When someone dropped
>money into the can he would become animated for a few moments, open his
>eyes (to look into the can of course) and interact with the crowd, but
>without speaking. Mike and Matt really watched this guy for a while, but
>were both too scared to drop a coin in his tin cup. Another fun item
>which shows up in the different cities is the merry go round. This one
>dated 1900... bet they have an interesting history. Aigues-Mortes has a
>deeper history than what I mentioned in re trade and other incidents in
>time ... so you got just a glimpse. One last thing, there was a caveau
>(place to buy wine from the manufacturer) we discovered (typical
>American attitude) the wines of Listel an area where the grapes are
>grown in sand. What a treat so far.I don’t know if you can find them in
>the US, but the labels say things like”Vin de Pays des Sables du Golfe
>du Lion” (wines of the region of the gulf of the lion) or “Domaines
>Listel”. Dave and Dale

Snippets of text in other maps suggest that the above may have been included unintentionally. "Hill Climb" contains a customized list of Apple menu items...

About Dirt Bike
-
CEToolbox
QuicKeys 2
-
America Online
Apple System Profiler
Apple Video Player
AppleCD Audio Player
Automated Tasks
Brad's Disk
Calculator
Chooser
Connect To...
Control Panels
Dirt Bike 4.0 Project π
Eudora Pro 3.0
Find File
Graphing Calculator
InterSLIP Setup
Jigsaw Puzzle
Key Caps
Klondike 6.0
Mareike's Email
NCSA Telnet 2.6
Netscape Navigator™ 2.02
Netscape Navigator™ Gold 3.01
Note Pad
OpenDoc™ Stationery
PPC Dirt Bike Reg.
RealPlayer
Recent Applications
Recent Documents
Scrapbook
SimpleSound
Stickies
Vantage™

...and "Speed" contains a partial alphabetical listing of Macintosh Programmer's Workshop tools, which repeats 14 times throughout the file:

PPCLink
Print
ProcNames
ResEqual
Rez
RezDet
Search
SetPrivilege
SetVersion
Sort
StreamEdit
Translate
VersionList
WhereIs