Dirt Bike

Dirt Bike
Developers: Brad Quick, Michel de Messieres Platform: Mac OS Classic Released internationally: 1995 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden development-related text.

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