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Castlevania III Password Algorithm

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Re: Castlevania III Password Algorithm

#21

Post by grawprog »

fullstop wrote: post #6
scott_s wrote: post #2

As a kid, I was dumbfounded that passwords worked on NES games, and Castlevania III was my first introduction to the concept. I still remember staring at the screen not comprehending how putting in this combination of icons would get me my game back. I knew there’s no way they could manually create a password for every game state, but I also had no conception of discrete states, algorithms and hashing, so I literally…

Faxanadu passwords were the worst. Upper case, lower case, numbers, and some punctuation. It was, however, able to represent your inventory, location, money, etc. Pretty much a full state in ~24 characters, which I thought was very cool.. but 10-year old me didn't always write down the mantra correctly. You can read about this system here: http://www.the-interweb.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/...

Faxanadu passwords were pretty terrible for sure..but hands down the the absolute worst has to be james pond 3 on the genesis. There was like 4 different colours and a bunch of symbols like pieces of cheese and rayguns and stuff. The passwords were 32 characters long.

https://www.andrewnile.co.uk/blog/james-pond-3-fish-code/

Writing those things out was ridiculous. We had pages and pages scattered around with James pond passwords.

Re: Castlevania III Password Algorithm

#22

Post by fernandotakai »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #12
fullstop wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faxanadu passwords were the worst. Upper case, lower case, numbers, and some punctuation. It was, however, able to represent your inventory, location, money, etc. Pretty much a full state in ~24 characters, which I thought was very cool.. but 10-year old me didn't always write down the mantra correctly. You can read about this system here: http://www.the-interweb.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/...

I still think nothing beats Legend of the Mystical Ninja on Super NES. If you are playing a two player game and obtain a password, it's a full 60 characters you'll have to enter. For comparison, the Guardian Legend was 32 characters (like Faxandu) and Metroid was 24. I never played Magic of Scheherazade; looks like that weights in at 43 characters.

another horrible game for passwords? international super star soccer deluxe.

it was horrible[0] for really young me (and my friends/family) to type all the characters.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/djWNEy3.png

Re: Castlevania III Password Algorithm

#29

Post by worstenbrood »

scott_s wrote: post #2

As a kid, I was dumbfounded that passwords worked on NES games, and Castlevania III was my first introduction to the concept. I still remember staring at the screen not comprehending how putting in this combination of icons would get me my game back. I knew there’s no way they could manually create a password for every game state, but I also had no conception of discrete states, algorithms and hashing, so I literally…

I had the same experience with wonderboy 3: the dragons trap on the sega master system. Especially because it was a platform rpg where you could have different combinations of armor, weapons and shields.
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