Saboteur (NES)

Saboteur is an unreleased Atari 2600 game, ported to Famicom/NES hardware, and was published on Atari-licensed plug & plays including the original Atari Flashback.

The game had extensive edits made that were included on non-Atari-licensed plug & plays.

Revisional Differences#

To do: Add differences from the prototype version.

Ghost Castle	Clown's Mission	Hell	Hell (VT03)

As with many of Nice Code's Atari and Intellivision ports, the game was edited to create variants for generic plug & plays/multicarts. In Saboteur's case, the first level was turned into Ghost Castle, Clown's Mission, and the wonderfully-titled Hell; the latter additionally has a VT03 variant. There are only five floors in the revisions (compared to the original game's six), and the playfield is slightly wider.

Contest 2004	Butterfly	Spider Man 2	Masked Man II	Unwonted Space (VT03)

The second level was turned into Contest 2004, Butterfly, Spider Man 2, Masked Man II, and the VT03 Unwonted Space. These variants were edited to be much easier, with slower pacing and more forgiving A.I. Spider Man 2 and Masked Man II lock the controls to four directions, while the other versions allow the player to move in eight directions. Some variants of Masked Man II feature a generic insect (pictured), while others retain Dr. Octopus from Spider Man 2.

Developer Credits#

Contest 2004	Butterfly	Spider Man 2	Masked Man II

As with many Nice Code games, pressing Up, Down, Up, Left, Right, Left, B on the title screen will briefly display a credits screen. Doing this in Saboteur does nothing, but it functions in Contest 2004, Butterfly, Spider Man 2, and Masked Man II. NCG stands for Nature Color Game, one of several aliases used by Nice Code, and PJ most likely refers to the Power Joy series of Famiclones which many Nice Code games have been released on.

Garbage Data#

There are two revisions of the Contest 2004 ROM; one with a copyright byline of "© Copyright 2004", and another which instead says "Nature Color Game" and adds the developer credit screen. In the Nature Color Game version, a chunk of garbage data picked up from RAM on the developers' computer can be seen at address $7B2F (and continuing to the end of the PRG data):

Invalid stack size
$Insufficient memory
$
2500 A.D. Linker  Copyright (C) 1985  -  Version 4.01f

��6\Listing Destination  (N, T, D, E, L, P, <CR> = N) : �Error Only Listing Destination  (T, D, P, <CR> = T) : �LIST ON/OFF Listing Destination  (T, D, P, <CR> = T) : �

Enter Run Time Selection : �
�Assembly Terminated By Operator

�Can't Create Disk Listing File
�
                         ***** Active Commands *****

�                           Ctrl S = Stop Output
�                           Ctrl Q = Start Output
�                           Esc  C = Stop Assembly
�                           Esc  T = Terminal Output
�                           Esc  P = Printer Output
�                           Esc  D = Disk Output
�                           Esc  M = Multiple Output
�                           Esc  N = No Output

�Rename File Error
�Page %4u�LIB�������%c�
Maximum Number of Different Sections (%d) Exceeded.  Link Terminated.

�%s��Disk Listing  Filename : �Symbol Table  Filename : �Format   : �Linker Output Filename : �Microtek�Zax�Abbreviated 2500 A.D.�2500 A.D.�<None Specified>�
         Link Errors :  �         Output Format :  �Executable�Intel Hex�Extended Intel Hex�Tektronix Hex�Motorola S19�Motorola S28�M��orola S37�Çð�ð_ñ

References#