Star Battle

Star Battle
Developer: HAL Laboratory Publisher: Commodore Platform: Commodore VIC-20 Released internationally: 1981 This game has unused code. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has a notes page

Star Battle is based on Galaxian, which Commodore did have the license to, but only for Japan. It was taken off the market because of this, so it's a little tough to find.

Sub-Page

Notes

Removed Developer Credit Easter Egg

Immediately after Commodore Japan's copyright is a programmer credit for Satoru Iwata, hidden between 0x29A and 0x2F6:

THIS PROGRAM WAS
WRITTEN BY
- SATORU  IWATA -
APR.19.1981
HAL LABORATORY
AKIHABARA
TOKYO JAPAN

If the name "Satoru Iwata" sounds familiar, it's because he was the CEO of Nintendo of Japan and Nintendo of America from 2002 to 2015.

There is a bit of code intended to display this text when both Shift keys and the Commodore key are pressed on the title screen, but it was commented out for unknown reasons. It can be re-enabled with the below patch.

Download Iwata Easter Egg Restoration Patch File: StarBattle-VIC20-IwataFix.zip (2 KB) (info)

(Text: Ward Shrake, Patch: 8-Bit Show and Tell)