Hidden message in Dan Dare

[Sophie]

Hiya,

This is my first post in this forum, but I used to own a CPC464 and loved it. I now play the games I used to own via emulation, as my CPC died and no longer powers on.

I'm mainly posting because I have information about the game Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future that I can't find on the Internet, so I want to put it somewhere - but I don't know where! So maybe people here will be able to help me work out where it should go.

The thing is, in the game there's a hidden message in the form of several game screens that aren't normally accessible. I found this message on my real CPC and replayed it on my emulator to get screenshots. Here's how to get there (click on the screenshots to see the full-size versions; all of them were taken using MESS):

1. First, go to the screen to the right of the guy who tells you "Get more things Dan". Make sure that the moving laser gun on the right isn't in your way - shoot at it when it's high up.



2. Run to the end of the platform and jump off, so that you fall down near the right hand side of the screen. You'll get the normal message about falling unconscious and being captured by the Treens, but instead of falling down to the cell screen, you'll land on an invisible platform on the right-hand side of the screen.



3. On the platform, go right and jump before reaching the end of the screen. The next screen you enter is the start of a series of hidden screens with messages on them. Keep going right to read everything, and make sure that for the first few screens at least, you jump just before hitting the right hand edge, as the platforms on the next screens don't extend all the way to the left hand edge.











(watch out for the gap between the L and the I on this one, you're stuck if you get in there)











For those who can't see the images, the messages read:

MEKON RULES O.K.
NO-ONE LIVES ON VENUS
VIRGIN GAMES

At the end, you have a lift going down, which just takes you to a screen with one platform and no way to continue other than by jumping off:



Jumping off will result in falling into a black screen, then going back to the normal 'captured by the Treens' code.

By the way, if you fall during any of these screens (well, the ones you *can* fall on, anyway), you'll notice that you fall into a later section of the game, so this could even be used as a kind of cheat. The reason it works is because when Dan falls, he normally falls into an empty room (except for the invisible platform mentioned above), then falls *again* from that room into the prison. To avoid an infinite loop, the code that moves Dan to the empty room is disabled for the second fall; the empty room really is located above the prison. Because you end up averting the second fall, you can then fall from the secret rooms into the rooms below. (This is also why there's a black screen at the end when you fall; there's no game data defined for that screen.)

This probably doesn't belong on the wiki as such, but I'm not sure where it does belong. Does anybody have any ideas?

[Devilmarkus]

Hi Sophie,
welcome to our forum.
I hope you like it

This probably doesn't belong on the wiki as such, but I'm not sure where it does belong. Does anybody have any ideas?

Well why not for the Wiki?
You could start a category "Cheats, Pokes and Easter-eggs" or something like this 

It's a really cool finding and I dont think, many people know this.

[Gryzor]

Hello Sophie!

Let me first welcome you to our community, and then thank you for an excellent (or should I say... egg-cellent? har, har *cough*) introduction... It's funny, because the first result for "Mekon Rules O.K." on google is a financial article on the Spectator!

Anyhow, I'm going to try this tonight at home I'm always a sucker for easter eggs...

Indeed, this would fit best in the wiki's Dan Dare article, but worry not, I'll do the addition myself (why would it not fit? It's an encylcopaedia about everything CPC-related after all!)

One last question - how did you come to finding this? It sure sounds strange that an easter egg should remain undocumented for so long...

[Sophie]

The reason that I thought it didn't belong on the wiki was because I hadn't seen anything about easter eggs on there, so I figured that it wasn't the sort of thing that belonged. But obviously I'm wrong.

One last question - how did you come to finding this? It sure sounds strange that an easter egg should remain undocumented for so long...

I know! That was my first thought too. OTOH, Google doesn't even have any results for "Get more things Dan", which is *actually* part of the game, so maybe Dan Dare is just underappreciated...

As to how I found it, I'm not quite sure - when I initially found it I was a kid playing it on my real CPC, and that would most likely have been at least 20 years ago by now. I suspect I was just doing strange things and happened to land on that invisible platform, which got me intrigued. (For the record, the reason I say to go to that room in particular is that I believe it's the only room in the game - other than the one above it - that has a drop that far to the right-hand side. No doubt this was intentional to hide the egg.)

Glad you lot enjoyed, though. I'd edit the wiki myself, but I'm very new and don't yet know the editing guidelines, but I edit Wikipedia quite a lot so I'm aware of *how* to edit.

[edit: Oh, by the way, I apologise for the size of the full-size images; for various reasons I do a lot of things on my computer with oversized fonts and scalings. (I'm currently viewing this forum at 210%, for example.) So these shots are taken using a scaling that's probably rare. I can retake them at a lower scale if wanted, or you could just resize them.

Oh, and maybe I'm just vain, but since it *does* appear like I'm the first person to find this... could I be listed as the finder? I'm "Sophie" on the wiki. If this isn't normally done, then it's okay, but I kind of feel like I'm bringing some new info to the Internet that wasn't previously known, heh.]

[Xyphoe]

Well found Sophie!

I've not come across many 'easter eggs' in Amstrad games, I'm sure there's been one or two but can't at all remember now. I'm sure there's been deliberate 'hidden areas' to discover to get extra lives and stuff ... Turbo The Tortoise and Saboteur II spring to mind ... but ones like Dan Dare that you shouldn't really be able to find and are presented with 'out of the game' messages and the like I can't remember.

As I said on the Orion Prime topic, that has a nice easter egg to find! 

[Gryzor]

Morning Sophie!

I have added your instructions here.

Thanks for all your trouble in sharing it with us

By the way: there are no real guidelines in editing the wiki; Wikipedia is much stricter, so if you're used to that you're good to go here. And, proper attribution is always given, so I included your name, but if you want it done any other way please be my guest

[Devilmarkus]

I have added your instructions here.

Nice done!
(Perhaps someone knows more easter-eggs in CPC-Games?)

[Bryce]

There's an Egg in one of my favourite games, but it wasn't very well hidden, in fact it was all over the place including the front cover....

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Dizzy   

Bryce.

[Leonie]

If you do want to see eggs at all costs, then you should play "Chuckie Egg".

[arnoldemu]

If you do want to see eggs at all costs, then you should play "Chuckie Egg".

indeed. a cracking good game.

[Cholo]

Uploaded a video here of the "99 Falls" Easter Egg in Bruce Lee:


The "Egg" happens if you manage to get all the way to the laser field without dying once (must pick up all the lanterns and extras falls and reach 40k points).

Then there is the lvl-skip-bugs too (Bruce Lee):

[AMSDOS]

Certainally worth doing a thing on Games which have Easter Eggs included if an article hasn't been made. I only recall the one in Spindizzy, though I think everyone knows about that one!   
Played a bit of the Original Dan Dare too and hadn't came across that before - Good Find!    I wonder if Dan Dare 2 or 3 have simular things in them.

Another funny one I remember was Ghost Hunters. Use the Cheat in the game and when you completed the game you got the You Cheat message along with you'll die a slow horrible death or something to that effect. Of course using the Cheat Mode in the game actually help me to complete the game and see the the proper completion message!