Ten Pin Alley/Hidden content

Back to: Ten Pin Alley.

This list is incomplete. The following list has been marked as incomplete. If you can, please complete it.

Note: Many of these "Easter eggs" were revealed by Saturn programmer Nathan Mates on his personal website between 13th November, 1998 and 5th Feburary, 2000.

Options Plus and More Options Plus

Highlight "Options" on the main menu and hold ++ while selecting with or . This will add two new menus: "Options Plus" and "More Options Plus" with the following settings:

• Meter Shaking:
• Postal Edie:
• Scoreboard Contrast:
• Meter Foulup Guides:
• Allow Uneven Teams:
• Beginner Tournaments:
• More lane decorations:

• Character reactions:
• Meter Visible:
• Alley Color Cycling:
• Flashing TPA Sign: Enable or disable the flashing Ten Pin Alley sign on the main menu.
• Animated Alley Load:
• Pan Camera with aim:

"Options" on the main menu will also change its name to "Options Plus".

Developer messages

Highlight "Credits" on the main menu and hold ++ while selecting with or . This will display a very long set of messages from programmer Nathan Mates, detailing technical details, thanking people and things and listing some of his favourite music:

Message contents

SALUT LES PURCHASERS D'UN SEGA SATURN! Have you ever seen such a thing on the Sega Saturn? Well, *I* haven't. Anyhow, you've found the fun scrolltext from Ten Pin Alley Saturn... this is one of many easter eggs. So I had a little fun! You should appreciate them. This scrolltext has NOTHING to do with the management at Adrenalin, ASC, or the like. It's just a programmer sitting behind a keyboard too bored stiff to program, but still wanting to do "something" for the game. Oh well, this is just fluff. If you don't like this, then press a button on the gamepad go get out of this and forget you ever saw it. DISCLAIMER: this product contains matter, and therefore has a small but finite chance of spontaneously "tunneling" into a completely different thing, one which may not bear any resemblance to that was advertised. Ain't quantum mechanics great? :) And first a word from our sponsor: Jesus loves you and died for your sins. Nothing you can do can get you to heaven except for faith in him. You may think you can get along fine without him, but God's just being gracious in keeping you alive long enough to get a clue. Those of you who've seen the PSX/95 version of this game will note the lack of "Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum" video, as well as the unanimated logos at the start. Well, ASC, the publisher, initially promised to fork over the $ so that we could get a rather nice (rhymes with Puck) movieplayer going. I spent a while getting it working. Then ASC decides to get cheap-ass on us, and didn't want to spend the money anymore. Thus, you get Nathan's 5-minute hack of still frame and a CDDA track. Yeah, I don't think it looks that great either, but it was that or get the game out even LATER. Blech. Technotes! platform-independent physics code: 8869 lines of C (and headers) in 21 files. Saturn-specific code: 22141 lines (709K) of C code. Just for the curious. Yes, this game's essentially written in straight C, using the SGL 3.02 libraries from you-know-who. Runs at 30fps with no noticeable slowdown in the game (I know parts of the menus run under 30fps, but I don't care :). A word to those who'd like to contact me: I am online, and I get enough email anyways, and drooling fanmail might be nice, but I'd rather not get much of that. So, keep it to a minimum-- just go tell all your friends to buy Ten Pin Alley for the Sega Saturn, and also post glowing reviews (jut kidding-- if the unthinkable happens and a big bug ships, then feel free to cut me down in public) online. That'll make me a lot happier than any email. If you've pirated this game, you owe me and the company $$$. Pay up, scum. You're not helping the price of games any. If you pirates had any real guts, you'd shoplift on videotape. Ooooh, you might get caught. And have to pay the penalty. But, then you'd be a pirate who cared enough to stand up for your beliefs, rather than a sniveling coward pirating games and getting your jollies from .jpgs. Joke from the programmer: Q: How can you tell that Bill Clinton is lying? A: His lips are moving. [Did I need to mention I've got about 300K more Clinton jokes online? No, go find them yourself. Plenty of web search engines exist. In fact, I've got over 22MB of humor online] Hellos to the guys in the office: Matt, for recoverting all the art at least 15,000 times until we were happy with it, and never yet going postal on me. Greg and Peter, for getting the sound efx converted according to my specs (I *TOLD* you we could pull it off. And get that cassette tape out of the jewel box for stores! The Saturn does sound better than that :) Mark M, for buying lots of food to keep me going during all the late night programming sessions. Ofer, Alex, Dave for the code I borrowed from your versions, and being generally cool people to waste time with. Alan, Ian, Bernie for all the original art. Mark C, for bouncing ideas off of, and hammering on a few pests. Randy and Tim for fixing and/or replacing all the equipment that spontaneously fell apart on my work machines-- current tally is 2 SCSI drives, 1 SCSI controller, 4 IDE CD-ROM drives, 1 SCSI cable, 1 Mouse, 1 case, and at least 20 copies of Windoze 0.95. Jay (another 'Techer!) for founding this rather fun company, Adrenalin Entertainment. Special thanks to Linus Torvalds and the rest of the Linux project for making a far more stable OS than anything out of Mickeysoft, as the computer AI coding required a *LOT* of number crunching, and Doze95 couldn't cut it. Since our physics engine is real nice and portable, it compiled right away and ran without crashing the whole OS. 20-30% faster execution with gcc -O2 versus VC4.2 full opts on the same hardware. Remember, you don't have to bend over for the pretty icons in the OS; real geeks don't need anything more than a vt100. Also special thanks to the makers of caffeinated sugary soft drinks, candy, and other snacks. An IV drip of nutrients, and I could be at work 14 hours a day without moving. Hmmm; better get me a better chair before I try anything like that. In case you haven't fed this CD to a desktop computer or workstation yet, go try it. Poke around; you might find some neat stuff on it. And if you're stuck with a small (640x480) screen, sorry. Go find one of many graphic utility programs for computers to resize them down. I'd rather ship with the extra quality, as you can shrink pix without problems, but blowing up stuff makes them look rotten. As a bonus, I've managed to put on some of the *VERY* old original design art for the game that became TPA. Yeah, you'll see the PSX controller on it, but just ignore that. Also hellos to the Colliderz team here in the building. Get your game out already, lots of people are wanting to play it! And hellos to TK Yang, the other inhouse Saturn programmer for bouncing some ideas off of, and explaining random crud. Good luck with your web sites! [Oops. As of this writing, Colliderz is in trouble... If/when it makes it out the door, then you'll see it] Well, that list of 'around the office' includes quite a few folks who have left the building. Best wishes to those who've gone on to greener pastures... And computer type folks outside the office: SEGA DTS (Hi EDTS) for putting up with all my questions, and only RTFMing me a few times when necessary. ASC for putting this game on the shelves. Sega of Japan's AM* divisions, for really raising the bar so high for quality Saturn games. [And the idea for a rather fun easter egg... return of the monster anime-sized heads :] Folks *really* outside the office: hello, Mom & Dad. Thanks for raising me, sending me to college, etc. One of these days you'll be able to understand what I'm doing... maybe. :) Hi, Jeremy. Also hellos to the congregation of Hope Chapel, Sepulveda Blvd, Hermosa Beach, CA. Special hellos to the Pastor, Zac. (He's covered like 20 verses of the book of Hebrews while TPA's been in development. Maybe he'll finish a chapter by the next milennium shows up in 2001 :) Hope Chapel is a cool church! Show up one day, willya? I usually attend the 7PM Friday service, mostly since that's one of the easiest ones to wake up for :) Q: What do you need to do to go to hell? A: Absolutely nothing. You do need to do something to go to heaven: accept Jesus into your heart and believe in him. Special thanks to all the manufacturers of caffeinated soft drinks and candy for making this game possible :) Games making the honor roll of ones that have slowed TPA/Saturn's development down somewhat: DN3D + PPak, TR PC/3dfx, WC2 (plus a few hundred extra levels just to prove that the computer's AI really sucks), C&C:RA, Df, SS/Sat, and a few more. All game titles are copyrighted to their copyright holders, and have been acronymized/misspelled to avoid any potential legal problems. Your mileage may vary. Do not taunt happy fun ball. Go play what you want to play. If you don't like this, then press a button to stop reading this and go do whatever's legal that makes you happy. Music making the honor roll of things I listened to a lot in development, in no particluar order. [Well, the order in which the piles of CDs current lie on my desk, which isn't much of one] Babylon 5 Soundtracks 1 & 2. Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories. Please Save My Earth. Bubblegum Crisis Vocal collection 1 & 2. The Echoing Green: Defend Your Joy & Aurora 7.2. Alphaville: *. Tenchi Muyo: *. Video Girl Ai: *. _Dune_ original soundtrack. _Batman_ soundtrack. _Blade Runner_ soundtrack (the real one by Vangelis, not the cruddy original one). Macross +: *. _Les Miserables_: 2-disc London cast. Rhythm Saints: Contiuum. Tangerine Dream: Tryanny of Beauty, Turn of the Tides, The Dream Mixes, Best of Berlin, Fushigi Yuugi: *. Pet Shop Boys: *. Paradigm Shift. Beethoven Symphonies 1-9. Haydn Symphonies 93-104. Plus a bunch more I've swapped out to home. Oh well... [Those of you keeping track can see that there's a heck of a lot of anime and electronic stuff in there. For some reason, I just want that when programming; more classical stuff is listened to at home.] Hellos go out to the irc #*****iigs crowd... [No, we don't want tourists around our channel. You have been warned that we'll /kick, /kill, and shred losers who drop by.] IRSMan and Abaddon for random technical info from guys with a bit more experience than myself (plug: go buy Nadden 9* (whatever's the latest and greatest) for Saturn/PSX, Russki Strike/Saturn, etc). thrig (no relation whatsoever, and darn good at VF2 :), Zelix (cool Christian brother), HdwrNut (gimme the Zip FAQ already :). notbob, derex & gdr (GNO/MEn), HalB (Raggerfall is cool, err... bugfix #53,453,121 makes it cooler :) belgorath & daver (How many times have you guys SoLDoUt this week? :), markm (thanks for breakin.. err beta'ing TPA) flux, The_Phog, plaque (Trust me, BDK's in the game!) Fever, siris, qbot (no such nick: hellos), jsanford (get out of that corner and find a job you like!), jalapenio, drechsau and the other ex-Winternyet.com types... [ This space for rent Oops, too slow in sending your cash to me... will just have to remain empty. ] Yes, I'm online. AND YOU SYSTEM ADVOCATES CAN ALL SHUT UP ALREADY! GOT IT??? If you really cared for your system, you'd just be playing it a lot more and shutting up, but I think you're compensating for lack of body parts by badmouthing systems unnecessarily. And TPA/Saturn is VERY much a 3D game, and the Saturn's handling it just fine, thankyouverymuch. Each game system has its benefits and disadvantages. Just play the games you like, and you won't have to spend pointless time bashing others. From a programmer's standpoint, they've all got the quirks that make them painful to program, so that's why they pay us the $ to deal with it. I've gotten to the point where I kinda like programmning the Saturn, but don't care what the next game is for. I play most of my games on my PC-clone at home (3dfx voodoo chip seriously rocks) [Well, you'd have to pay some top $ to see me doing a 2600 title, but that's pretty dead nowadays. Vectrex, hmmmm... :] Enscribed on the tombstone of an Athiest: "All dressed up and nowhere to go." Notice to polygon-rights activists: polygons *WERE* harmed, deleted, collapsed, crunched, and otherwise abused during the creation of this game. Same with enough bugs to restock a third world country. So we abused them. So we killed them. Like we care; that's our job here. If you're concerned about the "rights" of polygons and bugs, get out of your granola-eating, birkenstock-wearing idiocy and get a life! For those of you who've stuck it out this far in the scroll text, a little easter egg. Set player in slot #4 to the name 'Refract' and start a game. Ok, so I had some fun with transparancies, after Alex (TPA/PSX type) complained that the PSX's control over transparancies wasn't as great as he wanted, something about not enough levels. And I have 32 here, heheheh. There's still a few more bonuses I'm NOT yet telling you about here :) Sorry, no bonus alleys, but there's a special version of a character on the CD. You can also look for the next Bowling game being developed here at Adrenalin, published by T*HQ hopefully in 1998. PC and PSX only for now, sorry Sega. [Well, SoJ seems to have reasonably clueful people in control, and their market position's reflected that. However, in the US, ...] Message repeats.... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Manually adjust CPU AI

There are five difficulty levels for AI characters: 1 is Rookie, 2 and 3 is Journeyman, and 4 and 5 is Pin King/Queen. However, when selecting the skill, there is no means of knowing whether you've set the level to 2 or 3, or 4 or 5; by holding + while selecting lets you cycle through the five AI levels instead of just three.

Wait reactions

When lining up your character using and , let go of the controls and after every 20 seconds, a waiting animation will play. This can be sped up by holding , or stopped entirely by holding .

After 30 reactions, the character will begin to spin.

Taunt other players

When the meter shows up when a player is about to bowl, hold ++ then press either , or to taunt. You cannot taunt yourself and the function does not work in tournaments.

Harder players in tournaments

At the tournament welcoming screen, hold ++ then press either or to trigger a sound effect. This should add harder players to the lineup, though as the player choices are randomised, it is not guaranteed.

Vectrex mode

After the introductory videos have played, hold ++ until the white of the Ten Pin Alley logo turns black. Now all the 3D geometry will be rendered as a wireframe. Developers Adrenalin Entertainment previously worked on Vectrex games as the development arm of Western Technologies.

Player name codes

The codes below require the user to input special player names in the six name slots. The character type used for the slots do not matter, only the names.

The effects are activated as soon as table is name laid out as below, allowing you can go back and customise a game.

Faster wait reactions

1		2
3		4
5	3DWait	6

Shorten the time between "wait reactions" (see above).

This code is revealed for winninng a beginner tournament.

Characters made up of bowling pins

1	Vector	2	Pins
3		4
5		6

Turns all players into characters made up of bowling pins.

This code is revealed for winninng a amateur tournament.

Kyoko

1		2
3	FEIF	4
5	DEI	6	gdbg

Adds the anime schoolgirl Kyoko to the list of characters. She has perfect stats, you cannot change her outfit, hair or skin colour, and she bowls by firing the ball horizontally out of her hands.

The code is a reference to the California Institute of Technology and the slogans of its Fleming, Dabney and Blacker houses (their position in the table being a rough geographical position of the houses in real life).

This code is revealed for winninng a pro tournament.

Ignore accuracy meter

1	ICant	2	Play
3	Legally	4
5		6

Ignores the accuracy meter, so as long as you don't overshoot and miss entirely, the ball should move perfectly in the direction chosen.

Computer opponents bowl perfect games

1		2
3		4	CPU300
5		6

Ensures the computer never loses.

Happier reactions

1		2
3		4
5	Happy1	6

Increase the chance of the crowd having a positive reaction to shots.

Sadder reactions

1		2
3		4	Downers
5		6

Increase the chance of the crowd having a negative reaction to shots.

Lane transparency

1		2
3		4	Refract
5		6

Make the lane pulse with semi-transparent effects. This was added in response to developers of the PlayStation version complaining of a lack of "good transparency controls".

Give characters shadows

1		2
3	Vorlons	4
5		6

Render shadows beneath characters. This feature was turned off because it negatively affected performance.

Pseudo-transparent balls

1		2
3	Glass	4	Balls
5		6

This will attempt to give the balls a glass-like appearance, though much of the time come off as transparent due to the way rendering works on the Saturn.

Swap head and ball models

1		2
3		4	Ichabod
5	Crane	6

Swaps player heads with the player's bowling balls. This was inspired by a PlayStation code, but applies to all characters.

Big head mode

1	Hi	2	AM2
3	Big	4	Heads
5		6

Give characters big heads. The code is a nod to Sega AM2 who were producing some of the most technically advanced Sega Saturn games at the time.

"Babylon 5" spinning screen

1		2
3	Babyln5	4	Spinmde
5		6

Makes the screen rotate endlessly. Programmer Nathan Mates was a fan of the show Babylon 5 which inspired this code.

Make things greyscale

1		2
3		4
5	1950s	6	TV

Turns newly loaded assets greyscale. This is not a universal effect, as some elements of the game (such as the pins) are constantly re-loaded. You also have to manually change the alley to see a difference there.

Alternative Vectrex modes

1	Vectrex	2	Mode1
3		4
5		6

Similarly to the above, turn newly loaded assets into wireframes. Using Mode2 as player 2's name stops the back faces of polygons being rendered.

Using the "taunt version" gives the effect better coverage.

Reset above effects

1	Reset	2
3		4
5		6

Resets any of the effects activated above.

PC content

Art

Load the disc into a Windows PC to access a number of images in a BONUS folder. These are a mixture of pre-rendered wallpapers and design documents:

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  DESIGN01.GIF

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  DESIGN02.GIF

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  DESIGN03.GIF

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  DESIGN04.GIF

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  DESIGN05.GIF

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  DESIGN06.GIF

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  DESIGN07.GIF

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  DESIGN08.GIF

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  DESIGN09.GIF

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  DESIGN10.GIF

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  DESIGN11.GIF

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  DESIGN12.GIF

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  DESIGN13.GIF

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  DESIGN14.GIF

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  DESIGN15.GIF

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  DESIGN16.GIF

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  DESIGN17.GIF

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  DESIGN18.GIF

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  DESIGN19.GIF

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  DESIGN20.GIF

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  DESIGN21.GIF

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  DESIGN22.GIF

• 

  DESIGN23.GIF

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  TENPIN01.JPG

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  TENPIN02.JPG

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  TENPIN03.JPG

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  TENPIN04.JPG

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  TENPIN05.JPG

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  TENPIN06.JPG

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  TENPIN07.JPG

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  TENPIN08.JPG

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  TENPIN09.JPG

• 

  TENPIN10.JPG

• 

  TENPIN11.GIF

• 

  TPA_LOGO.TIF

King James Bible

The full King James Bible exists on the disc, and can be found in the README folder. It is split into 66 separate TXT files, with a 67th acting as an intro:

INTRO.TXT contents
Note: the following is a copy of the King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible, quite out of copyright by now. Not placed here by any group that drops Bibles in hotels/motels/etc, just by your humble little programmer. Hopefully, you'll find it useful. Any errors in splitting up the 4MB file I got off the web are purely mine.