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Here's an easter egg in the new Lego Batman that I think all of you will REALLY appreciate. It's so good, I had to make a video.

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In the '80s I created an extension to Commodore Basic that added dozens of useful commands. One great feature was being able to use text labels instead of line numbers for GOTO and GOSUB commands. Since I'd added many commands found in Pascal like its powerful 'Case' statement, I called it Bascal. 👇

I also added a 'MENU' command which could create a dropdown menu that pointed to an array with the text of the menu choices and what they did when picked. The menu could be dynamic so menu items could be added to or subtracted from by simply changing the array from within the program.

While the Commodore 64 𝘥𝘪𝘥 have 64K of RAM not all of it was easily accessible! The image below shows how C=64 'memory map' is divided up. Because the C=64's CPU (6510, a 6502 variant) could only address 64k, ROM chips and I/0 block had to 'share' the address bus with RAM. BASIC RAM was only 38K. 👇

The 'hidden' RAM under the ROM chips could still be accessed though. So I 'hid' my cash register program (written in BASCAL) under the last 12K of ROM from D000 to FFFF. When Reset was hit, the running address would be saved and the cash register launched. When done, it picked up where is left off.

Ha ha! A functioning type-in program in a modern video game, that doubles as C64 nostalgia and triples as official Batman-licensed software! That is so great!

this is just proving the only bigger nerds than lego nerds are the nerds who make the lego games. (they're probably also lego nerds, though, so, yeah.)

This is the equivalent of me noticing in that 3D Simpsons Halloween episode that there's hex chars flying around, when converted to ASCII says "Frink Rules!".

Nice find! So far, I only got the names in the pinball machine, but not this, but I just had access to the Batcave. I hope there are some more stuff like this!

Apparently it does. Not hard, you've got sprite support right in the hardware. So, iirc 96 bytes of data to define the image and then you just turn one on and keep setting the x/y position.

Amazing. I remember getting a book from the library called something like "How to program your C64". One was "drawing the New York skyline". It just really produced some rectangles of different colours but as a kid I felt I witnessed a miracle

There was also a memory location that you could POKE a specific value into, to disable the reset key combination. We first did that poke and then added your classic code. We did this in the department store and checked out later if it was still running…

The fact that you had to make a video says everything — some easter eggs deserve more than just a screenshot. Now I'm genuinely curious what the developers were thinking when they snuck that in! 🦇