Question about a rare Freddy Pharkas (Mac) easter egg

[eisnerguy1]

So, I had a rather bizarre question about the Mac version of Freddy Pharkas. I did a search on Google Groups and found a post by Keith Nemitz (one of the lead Mac devs at Sierra) from 7/1/93.

In the post, he mention a special Mac easter egg. In a response to my email he said:

"If I remember correctly, at the start of the game, if you travel to an
ajacent screen (not sure which direction) there is a pond. If you do
something to the pond (can't remember, may require an item or talk to
it...), a hand will reach out of the water offering a Macintosh.

good luck! Let me know if you figure it out.

The pond was used in the game demo, but not for the final game. My team
thought it'd be fun to add something."

I did some digging and threw together a quick website with my findings:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/176 ... index.html

Short version is that thanks to various tools, I know what message the game displays when the easter egg happens, what sound is used (probably); what script, view, palette, position, scale & etc. are used but not how to actually get the easter egg to show up in the game normally

I emailed both Al Lowe & Josh Mandel & neither knew of this easter egg or how to trigger it.

I was wondering if anyone had ever seen this easter egg in action for themselves and knows how to trigger it?

[OmerMor]

I could help with finding the easter egg's trigger.
But I don't have the mac demo of FF. I didn't even know one existed.
Can you share it somewhere?

[eisnerguy1]

I could help with finding the easter egg's trigger.
But I don't have the mac demo of FF. I didn't even know one existed.
Can you share it somewhere?

Sorry, should probably clear that up. The demo that was being referred to was the DOS floppy demo. In the DOS floppy demo, the swamp was used as a plot point. This area wasn't important in the final DOS version. There wasn't a Mac demo.

[OmerMor]

Can you please extract the following files from the resource fork of Data1, and upload them?

- 270.MSG
- 270.SCR
- 270.HEP

[eisnerguy1]

Can you please extract the following files from the resource fork of Data1, and upload them?

- 270.MSG
- 270.SCR
- 270.HEP

Ok, inside the folder, I've included 2 sets. The first set has the files extracted using rezycle & the second set has the files extracted using the diskdump scummvm debugger console command.

moderatorial: removed link with copyrighted content

Thanks for offering to help with this, I really appreciate it!

[OmerMor]

I haven't been able to disassemble/decompile the script with the following tools:
- SV
- SCI Companion

I'm trying to understand what's different about the mac scripts, but I'm not an expert.

Perhaps a dev here could help shed more light.

Idealy, the files could be converted to their PC equivalents, and then decompiled with SCI Companion.

[eisnerguy1]

I haven't been able to disassemble/decompile the script with the following tools:
- SV
- SCI Companion

I'm trying to understand what's different about the mac scripts, but I'm not an expert.

Perhaps a dev here could help shed more light.

Idealy, the files could be converted to their PC equivalents, and then decompiled with SCI Companion.

I should've mentioned that I tried that already. Sorry. Apparently, the Mac files use Big Endian instead of Little Endian. I emailed the guy who runs https://erolfi.wordpress.com (who created SCI Resource Dumper) and he said this:

Unlike SCUMM, which basically used the same file format both in the DOS and in the Mac version of the game, Sierra programmers decided to use the Big Endian format for number representation (as was the Mac standard back then). So you also cannot use any of the TraduSCI tools for that.

I once made some tool to convert data from SCI games to MacSCI (not the other way around, like your case). My purpose was to port Quest for Glory 4 to the Macintosh, but I eventually gave up because I had few knowledge of the SCI scripts back then.

But, what I can tell you based on that work is that, theorically, if you take the source code of a SCI disassembler and replace all the addresses from Little Endian to Big Endian, you might convert it to a disassembler for MacSCI scripts. I suppose that, if ScummVM supports Mac SCI games, you could probably receive more information from one of their contributors.

I have no idea how to accomplish this though :/

[eisnerguy1]

So, I finally figured out the elusive easter egg that was exclusive to the Mac version of Freddy Pharkas.

By using the “Talk” icon in the same spot on the Mine that generates the “Mac programmers deep within the Old Abandoned Mine toil at their shunned lore.” message (by using the "Look" icon), a sequence will begin that ends with a hand raising a Macintosh out of the swamp.

I didn't think about using the Talk icon in that same exact spot until I read this message.

I uploaded a video of the whole easter egg on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12N6y47yTwk

Feels good to have finally figured this out

[sev]

moderatorial:

eisnerguy1, while we appreciate your efforts and value your findings, distributing copyrighted content over ScummVM forums is violation of our Forum Rule #0. You're getting a warning.

OmerMor, same for you.

You both get a warning. 3 warnings make a permanent ban on our forums.

[eisnerguy1]

moderatorial:

eisnerguy1, while we appreciate your efforts and value your findings, distributing copyrighted content over ScummVM forums is violation of our Forum Rule #0. You're getting a warning.

OmerMor, same for you.

You both get a warning. 3 warnings make a permanent ban on our forums.

I'm sorry. It won't happen again.