Passwordsystem in older (SNES/GEN) games=wtf?

[Zubiac666]

Just played Wolfenstein 3D (SNES) again and enterd a password.
I realized that in most (all?) older games (NES/SNES/GEN etc) there wasn't the vocal "A" in the passwordsystem!!

but why?

[DotCom]

Hey nice find. It was probably because of the programming or something like that, like the letter A can't be used with the function.

[pango]

Just played Wolfenstein 3D (SNES) again and enterd a password.
I realized that in most (all?) older games (NES/SNES/GEN etc) there wasn't the vocal "A" in the passwordsystem!!

but why?

yea ive noticed that myself

[Schenley]

I was wondering something a little different... These carts didn't have batteries, right? So the passwords were preprogrammed into the ROMs for every possible scenario?

For example, on Caesar's Palace for the Genesis... Enter your password and it remembers your name and how much money you had. How did that work?

[Dangerboy]

As far as the missing A, dunno.

As far as the "how does it remember your name etc?" Each letter in the name / number in the amount has a specific password set up assigned to it, and then each of those have a spot in the programming code, it's not so much the password "remembering your information", so much as it's telling the game where to specifically look in memory to throw the info it needs up on screen.

The best example of this is how some members at cmgsccc.com back in the day hacked Tekken 3's front end menu and re-arranged the letters to spell out the phrase "Versus Books rocks with skill."

Heck, I was able to figure out Blaster Master's GBC password feature with pen and paper so I could start anywhere, with any weapon, in any amount. =)

Jason

[Zubiac666]

uh so noone can solve the the great "missing -A- WTF?" riddle so far.
I played Top Gear 2 (SNES) today and realized that not even this game (passwords are like "sggxjhgjhhggd7836te2t76t2t87dt2dt2t7t27t" ) has an "A".

Anyone knows why?
I wanna know this
damnit

[DigitalSpace]

I have no clue. However, I've noticed that the first Top Gear and Krusty's Super Fun House (both SNES) do have A's in their passwords. Hmm...

[davidbrit2]

A lot of Nintendo published games have no vowels in the passwords to avoid passwords generated with dirty words.

Passwords systems aren't too fancy, really. Each character is a certain bit sequence, and when you stick all the characters together, you get a complete bit string. Then the information is just encoded as necessary, as it would be with a small amount of save RAM. Metroid is a great example of this kind of password system. Some games have premade password tables, though, and those are usually just simple "what level" type passwords.

[Dangerboy]

A lot of Nintendo published games have no vowels in the passwords to avoid passwords generated with dirty words.

Hence the infamous "F---" Metal Gear password : )

[rbudrick]

I have never noticed any games with no "A" or no vowels. I can't even think of one. All of them I think of have "As."

Let's list these games....

-Rob

[Zubiac666]

DigitalSpace wrote:

I have no clue. However, I've noticed that the first Top Gear and Krusty's Super Fun House (both SNES) do have A's in their passwords. Hmm...

ok...this makes it even more strange

@ davidbrit2:
but why hasn't Wolfenstein 3d (no Ninty game) an A in it's passwordsystem?

[davidbrit2]

@ davidbrit2:
but why hasn't Wolfenstein 3d (no Ninty game) an A in it's passwordsystem?

You got me. Maybe it's too close to R in that font. Sometimes you'll see similar letters/numbers removed.

A/R
B/8
I/1
O/0

You get the idea. Sometimes they're just nice enough to use a good, disambiguous font.

And how many characters are there in total to choose from in those passwords?

[Ed Oscuro]

It's most certainly not a programming issue.

Some of you may remember that there's a code in the original Metal Gear for NES that starts you out at the final boss with essentially no weapons and poor gear. "FUCKME" is part of the password string to do that.

The only reason some password systems have stripped the vowels is so that kiddz can't spell out naughty words. That's all. When the Castlevania/Contra Collector's Edition package was released for PC a couple years ago, one of the changes was the elimination of vowels from the Castlevania 2 password system. Sounds silly, but somebody thought it was worthwhile.

[jerkov]

Years ago, one of my friends sent an email to Nintendo about that "FUCKME" password in Metal Gear. We know that Nintendo didn't make the game, but back then we thought it was funny to send these weird emails to Nintendo saying how offended we were about certain things in old video games. Some other examples off the top of my head were the fact that Kirby wears no pants and how it seems that Urban Champion promotes violence between Irish and Italian people (don't ask how we came up with that one.....). For some reaason or another, we found it humorous to bring up all these old forgotten NES games since the N64 was in full swing back then and no one really cared about the NES at all.

Well, anyways, someone at Nintendo responded to the Metal Gear email and actually said that the password was just a random occurrence and was not intentional. So, the fact that the "FUCKME" password essentially does exactly what it says by sending you to the final boss with no weapons is just a coincidence? Ha ha, I think not......Nice try, Nintendo customer service representative.....ah, the shit I remember at 2 AM....