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| Question about a rare Freddy Pharkas (Mac version) easter egg | |
Posted by: eisnerguy1 on 2016-02-17 17:10:03 So, I had a rather bizarre question about the Mac version of Freddy Pharkas. I did a search on Google Groups and found a post by Keith Nemitz (one of the lead Mac devs at Sierra) from 7/1/93 In the post, he mention a special Mac easter egg. In a response to my email he said: "If I remember correctly, at the start of the game, if you travel to an ajacent screen (not sure which direction) there is a pond. If you do something to the pond (can't remember, may require an item or talk to it...), a hand will reach out of the water offering a Macintosh. good luck! Let me know if you figure it out. The pond was used in the game demo, but not for the final game. My team thought it'd be fun to add something." I did some digging and threw together a quick website with my findings. Short version is that thanks to various tools, I know what message the game displays when the easter egg happens, what sound is used (probably); what script, view, palette, position, scale & etc. are used but not how to actually get the easter egg to show up in the game normally 😛 I emailed both Al Lowe & Josh Mandel & neither knew of this easter egg or how to trigger it. I was wondering if anyone had ever seen this easter egg in action for themselves and knows how to trigger it? | |
| Posted by: Paralel on 2016-02-17 20:28:29 Well the trigger should be in the code somewhere. | |
| Posted by: eisnerguy1 on 2016-02-17 22:49:59 That's what I figured as well but, I can't find a way to properly read the "script 270". ScummVM's debugger can dump the script but, it's unreadable. I've also tried various SCI resource viewing programs but, they don't recognize/read the game's files. | |
| Posted by: eisnerguy1 on 2016-02-18 14:33:45 Sorry, should probably clear this up. The demo that was being referred to was the DOS floppy demo. In the DOS floppy demo, the swamp was used as a plot point. This area wasn't important in the final DOS version. There wasn't a Mac demo. | |
| Posted by: Paralel on 2016-02-18 15:06:55 Oh, DOS should make it alot easier (well, at least easier in my mind, I'm not quite as good with Mac real-time debugging). Run it in a virtual machine with a debugger and step through the code as its executed, you might be able to find the trigger that way. You might even want to dump the memory of the virtual machine once you're in that area since the trigger might be loaded into memory once you are on that screen since it has to load the script. | |
| Posted by: eisnerguy1 on 2016-02-28 21:41:57 So, I finally figured out the elusive easter egg that was exclusive to the Mac version of Freddy Pharkas. By using the “Talk” icon in the same spot on the Mine that generates the “Mac programmers deep within the Old Abandoned Mine toil at their shunned lore.” message (by using the "Look" icon), a sequence will begin that ends with a hand raising a Macintosh out of the swamp. I didn't think about using the Talk icon in that same exact spot until I read this message. I uploaded a video of the whole easter egg on YouTube. | |
| Posted by: Paralel on 2016-02-28 21:54:38 Glad you got it figured out, now its preserved for all time. | |
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