This page is about an Atari 2600 implementation of the
Homestar Runner C.H.E.A.T. game
(well, there wasn't actually a game,
it was just a screenshot of an E.T. parody).
It's currently fully playable. including the ability to win.
Legal Note
This product contains trademarks and/or copyrighted works of
homestarrunner.com.
All rights reserved by homestarrunner.com.
This product is not official and is not endorsed by homestarrunner.com.
Implementation Details
The extremely limited Atari 2600 hardware is a bit too complex
to get into here. I'm using an 8k ROM, and you get 128 bytes
(yes bytes) for all your RAM. There's no graphics framebuffer,
you have to "race the beam" (i.e. you have 76 cycles to update a line of
graphics as it's being drawn, then start all over again for the next line).
Current Status
This was a spring break project that I eventually "finished", or at least
finished as much as will fit in 8k.
Directions
Press reset/fire to start. Use the joystick to move.
Fire button for hovering/giving cakes.
You are The Cheat. Your goal is to collect 12 cheatcakes (little
yellow boxes) and take them to Bubs at the Concession Stand.
Watch out! If the crude approximation of Strong Bad catches you,
he'll steal all your cheat cakes and send you back to your home.
While in a pit, watch out for grumble cakes (little black boxes) as if
you touch too many bad things can happen.
Note you can only carry a maximum of 4 cheatcakes at a time.
Videos
Some out-of-date video of the older version 1.0 running on actual hardware:
Screenshots
These screenshots are all from the Stella emulator.
Note they are from a slightly older version of the game so
the score indicator has upside-down ones instead of the
"cheatcake level" found in the final version.
The title screen, had to modify it slightly from the original.
You can only have 48-pixel wide images, getting more than 4 periods
would be tricky, and I was too lazy to get rid of the HMOVE artifact
(little black line on left side). You'll also notice the Videlectrix
logo is frustratingly 49 pixels wide (1 too big) but I couldn't find
a satisfying way to shrink it down by one.
Strongbadia! Nothing super amazing here. Strongbad is just a cylinder
because I need two sprites to have a two-toned The Cheat so I had to draw
him with a playfield/ball graphic. I like how he shambles, that was
mostly accidental.
The stick! With giant pits of course, as in theory this is vaguely
an E.T. parody.
Deep down in the pit. In case you are wondering the grumblecakes are black
and the cheatcakes are yellow. You can use The Cheat's definitely
canonical hovering ability to escape:
The weird home screen like in E.T. Hopefully I picked three representative
places that the authorities might drag you to.
Wanted to add another place you could go, so here's Bubs' Concession
stand. I'm not
entirely happy with how this turned out, it's weird to see it head on
but my attempts to have an off-center perspective looked worse.
Game Over! That's supposed to be a bear holding a shark. It was hard
to make them menacing in this resolution. I also wanted to have an overlay
so their teeth would be white, but the one-line asymmetric kernel I have
doesn't have enough cycles left over. I used what extra room I had
to make the mid-screen color change for the shark tail. I might
have to revisit this.
You can also talk to Bubs. Running out of room so he's a narrow
symmetric playfield with a sprite overlay for his face which turned
out looking more or less OK.
Real Life
I had a cartridge made up for the game. You can see maybe some similarities
to the source material.
In action on a real system:
System Requirements
A NTSC Atari 2600. Though you'll need a harmony cartridge or
something similar to load it on real hardware.
I currently don't have a PAL version of the game but in
theory I could possibly put together such a version.
How can I play it?
You can download the image below and then try running it on a real machine.
You can download the image and run it on an emulator.
It seems to run fine on Stella.
Q. Why is there a period missing after the T
on the title screen?
A.
To distract you from the period after the C being too short.
Actually getting those periods drawn is the most complex thing
about the title screen.
Q. Did you decompile the Flash version of the game?
A.
No. There was no flash version of this game, so all the
blame for the gameplay falls upon me.
Q. But wasn't there a DVD game based on this?
A. Yes, though maybe with a slightly different name
("Where's the C.H.E.A.T." maybe? The hrwiki is down
currently). Anyway I wasn't fully aware of that when
I made this, so it's unrelated.
Q. Is this just a ROM hack of the E.T. game?
A.
No. The game is written completely from scratch.
Q. Why is the plot so weird?
A.
It's a vague parody of the infamous E.T. game for the 2600
which is really weird to play if you don't read the manual.
Even if you do it's fairly inscrutable.
Q. Did you ever play the E.T. game back in the ancient times?
A.
Watching someone play E.T. (poorly) in the early 1980s is possibly
my first console gaming memory. I don't remember if I was ever
allowed to play it, if I did I'm sure I wasn't very good at it.
Q. Why is the music so awful?
A.
The Atari 2600 wasn't meant to play music and it's actually
physically impossible to play certain notes ("F" is the one
causing trouble here). The music is based on "The Cheat is Not Dead"
sheetmusic from the advent of songs event on Twitter, it might
not have been the best choice. Maybe "The Cheat, Where ya Going
To" would fit better.
Q. Should strongbad be annoyed to be represented as
a featureless cylinder?
A.
Hopefully he realizes it's a step up from being a monochrome
cube in "Secret Collect."
Q. Who is throwing all of those baked goods into pits?
A.
I don't know. My best guess would probably be Strong Mad.
Q. Why are there pits in that field anyway?
A.
This is vaguely canonical if you watch the "Cool Things"
cartoon.
Q. What's with the countdown timer and weird symbols next to it?
A.
The original game had a countdown timer and sort of vague symbols.
In the end I made it a bargraph showing your current
number of cheatcakes. I meant to also somehow represent
the total collected but couldn't figure out a good way
to do it in the bytes I have left. The screenshots
are from an older build with
placeholder code showing upside-down
1s and I've been too lazy to regenerate them.
Q. Why can't you consistently get Strongbad's name right?
A.
I can never remember how many spaces or what part to capitalize.
He should write a catchy song about it if he expects us
to get it right.
Q. Did you really find an actual Videlectrix prototype ROM?
A. I've been doing silly things like this on the internet for 25
years and I still can't always tell when people are playing
along with the joke or if they are genuinely confused.
I often misjudge and explain things which then annoys
people. So these days I might find it easier to just
not respond.
I'm declaring this game playable. Need to get an even dozen cakes, can
only hold 4. Seems to more or less work including levitating out ET style.
27 March 2023 (v 1.3)
Can now win the game if you bring back 5 cakes to bubs.
TODO is have to bring back 15, need to scrounge up some room.
25 March 2023 (v 1.2)
Can now talk to Bubs at the concession stand. Running a bit low on room.
22 March 2023 (v 1.1)
Wasn't planning on more work, but some comments on it and I decided
to maybe make this a "real" game of sorts. Added a game over
condition (touch 3 grumble cakes). Also added Bubs' Concession
stand level which involved a lot more re-arranging of the code
than I'd like. Still want to add some sort of victory screen.
20 March 2023 (v 1.0)
Added sound effects and the stick. Think I eliminated all glitches.
Declaring this 1.0.
19 March 2023 (v 0.3)
Have some gameplay working. Strongbadia was first. The blue/grey
screen was tricky trying to figure out how to draw the cheat while
having an asymmetric playfield (ended up using a 2-scanline kernel).
Then got the pit level going. Ran out of room, so using an 8k
F0 style ROM rather than 4k like I was originally trying for.
16 March 2023 (v 0.2)
Added the "music". The Atari 2600 famously can't hit all the notes.
F is the troublesome one here.
15 March 2023 (v 0.1)
Was working on an Apple II Homestar project and came across the
C.H.E.A.T. screenshot and well one form of procrastination led to
another (actually was stuck trying to figure out the physics engine and AI
in "duck pond" only to realize it might have neither).
