A little easter egg in the code for Saturn MK2

[dreemernj]

Found this at reddit and it made me chuckle.

*le direct link

I used to look for messages like this on Sega Saturn discs using BinTextScan. This is a message for padding out the content of files on the Saturn port of Mortal Kombat II:

(arena.dat)
00000020 0000 0001 7320 7468 6520 776F 726C 6420 ....s the world 
00000030 2020 2020 2020 6173 2020 2020 2020 2020       as        
00000040 2020 2063 6166 6665 696E 6520 2020 2020    caffeine     
00000050 2020 2020 2062 6F79 2020 2020 2020 2020      boy        
00000060 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D ----------------
00000070 4761 7279 204C 6964 646F 6E20 4259 4320 Gary Liddon BYC 
00000080 7275 6C65 7320 7468 6520 776F 726C 6420 rules the world 
00000090 2020 2020 2020 6173 2020 2020 2020 2020       as        
000000A0 2020 2063 6166 6665 696E 6520 2020 2020    caffeine     
000000B0 2020 2020 2062 6F79 2020 2020 2020 2020      boy        
000000C0 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D 2D2D ----------------
000000D0 4761 7279 204C 6964 646F 6E20 4259 4320 Gary Liddon BYC 
000000E0 7275 6C65 7320 7468 6520 776F 726C 6420 rules the world 
000000F0 2020 2020 2020 6173 2020 2020 2020 2020       as        
00000100 2020 2063 6166 6665 696E 6520 2020 2020    caffeine     
00000110 2020 2020 2062 6F79 2020 2020 2020 2020      boy

I asked him about it back in 2000 and he said: "That stuff in mk2 Saturn is in that file on the CD as the items in the file needed to be padded to 2048 byte boundaries. I put the text in cos I thought someone would end up reading it one day which is also why the message is justified to work with 32 byte output. I think that was about the best thing in MK2 Saturn as it was one of the worst games I’ve ever written. Oh well."

There were other games with interesting bits I remember like Shanghai Triple Threat and Tempest 2000..

I added some emphasis because I thought the comment was hilarious. Looking into a direct quote from him to verify.

 

[MRMIdAS]

BTW the initials BYC top the scoreboard on the Megadrive port of MK1