Swordquest EW hacking

["Paul Slocum" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've always had the theory that the guy that solved EW hacked the ROM to 
find the solution.  So yesterday I dug around in the ROM a little and it 
looks like they anticipated this and put in a fake clue and messed with the 
order.  A copy of my post to Atariage about this is below...

So you would have to hack a bit deeper to actually find the 
solution.  Probably figure out how it stores which items must be in which 
rooms.  It's feasible that somebody could have done it, but probably would 
have been pretty difficult, especially with bankswitching and not having 
the 2600 so well documented as it is today.

However, I don't really see how anyone could have figured out the solution 
by trial and error either.  There are way too many combinations of objects 
and rooms.  Maybe there's some way to figure it out from the comic, but 
nobody seems to have ever documented this.

-paul

-------------------------------------------
Posted to Atariage:
http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=52889
-------------------------------------------
I took a quick look at the ROM and I quickly found the clues, however they 
are in the wrong order and the last clue is replaced with a different one. 
It appears they anticipated people trying to hack the ROM! Also, this data 
is in the upper bank which would be tricky to access.

Here's what I found in the ROM:

01 0a 02 01 0b 01 03 01 0a 02 02
06 08 05 03 0a 07 07 05 05 07 01
04 04 06 03 0c 03 05 04 03 02 01

These correspond to the clues, but two are out of order and the last one 
21-1 is not a real clue according to the solution. The real last clue is 
47-5 which isn't present here. The fake 21-1 points to this page in the 
comic, where I guess the prominent word is "revenge"?

<http://www.atariage.com/comics/comic_page.html?MagazineID=45&CurrentPage=23>http://www.atariage.com/comics/comic_page.html?MagazineID=45&CurrentPage=23 


Here's the solution page:
<http://www.yosemite-sam.net/Solutions/Swordquest/Earth.htm>http://www.yosemite-sam.net/Solutions/Swordquest/Earth.htm 

-------------------------------------------