Bill Walsh College Football (Sega CD)

Bill Walsh College Football
Developer: High Score Productions Publisher: EA Sports Platform: Sega CD Released in US: December 1993 Released in EU: 1994 Released in BR: 1993 This game has hidden development-related text.

The first—and only—college football game on the Sega CD is chock full of development-related text, including no less than four build dates.

Development Text

This game is full of development text for a variety of features.

Sega CD battery backup utility

At offset 537809 is an explanation for a battery backup analysis utility. Line breaks have been added:

This a very simple Utility to enable you to look at the state of Battery
Back Up Ram on board this Sega CD. The options for filling memory, just place a
file into Battery Back Up Memory with the name of EA-TESTFILE. Hence the term 
NV Memory File. The Display Hex utility will only display the first 960 bytes
of a file, this should be enough for most applications
Due to Sega's Addendum to the CD Docs when you ALMOST fill NV Memory, the space
you leave may have to be 1 block larger than the Application you are testing.
- Thanks Sega ! Use the START button to select menu items and exit, the C
button is used for selecting files and YES/NO options Thats all folks!!!!
- MaD GaZ

This utility also includes a bunch of its own text. Its help option is humorously titled "Help!!! I am lost!!!"

MaD GaZ is the pseudonym of Gary Roberts. Roberts is credited with the CD version of BWCF.

Other development text

Many names for routines are buried in the program as well, as well as references to "Heap Start" and "MAINCPU".

Example lines

Located near the credits (both instances):

Example Line 0
Example Line 1
Example Line 2
Example Line 3
Example Line 4
Example Line 5
Example Line 6
Example Line 7
Wait Line!!

Build Dates

The game has not one but two instances of its credits. Each has a different build date, and despite being a US release, they call it a "Mega CD" build!

Offset 351403:

Date of this Mega CD Build. 10/26/1993  Time = 17:4:46

Offset 593839:

Date of this Mega CD Build. 10/15/1993  Time = 14:5:52

A third build date is encoded twice in the beginning of the code: "1993110212204100" -> November 2, 1993, 12:20:41.

At both of the "Mega CD Build" offsets is yet another build date, this one for the original port:

Date of Original Port Code. 8 JUN ,  1993 1:51:25 PM