Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet
Developer: Taito Publishers: Taito (JP), Coin-It (US) Platform: Arcade (Ben Bero Beh hardware) Released in JP: January 1986 Released in US: April 1986 This game has hidden developer credits.

Based on the popular flying space rock!

To do: Version Differences: older versions had a glitch where you could get a massive amount of points and freeze the game by bombing during specific instances which was fixed in later revisions and the Arcade Archives release. Also, Halley's Comet '87 needs documentation for any differences it may have as well.

Hidden Messages

There are 10 hidden messages in the game, all sharing the same base trigger.

The first one, "DO NOT ERASE !", is the default message for erasing the text at the start of each round.

The other nine messages can only be triggered by holding P2 Fire while erasing text, and the messages displayed depend on the current area:

Area	Message	Details
Venus	© KUMAGAYA !	Taito Kumagaya Laboratory was an offshoot of Taito that designed games like KiKi KaiKai, The NewZealand Story, and this.
Mecury	NAGATA OGATA !	"NAGATA" is Yoshihisa Nagata, a programmer at Taito. "OGATA" is Masaki Ogata, another Taito programmer. They ended up working together on another Taito game, Plump Pop.
Sun	OGURA TAKAHASHI !	"OGURA" is Hisayoshi Ogura, a composer who founded Taito's in-house band Zuntata. "TAKAHASHI" is Eikichi Takahashi, who would later work with Ogura on Darius.
Pluto	IWAI IWASAKI !	"IWAI" is Akira Iwai, who previously worked on Super Speed Race Jr. before going on to Arkanoid. "IWASAKI" is Nobuyuki Iwasaki, and this seems to be his first credited game. He went on to work on the mechanical designs for Chase H.Q. and Night Striker.
Neptune	SASAKI ISHIDA !	"SASAKI" is Daisuke Sasaki, another Taito programmer. "ISHIDA" is Kazutomo Ishida, and guess what? Programmer. Imagine that. They're the sole people credited for programming KiKi KaiKai.
Uranus	WATABE IIJIMA !	"WATABE" is Yoshiyuki Watabe, whose only other credited work is The Ninja Warriors. "IIJIMA" could be Tadashi Kimijima, who also worked on Arkanoid and Bubble Bobble.
Saturn	TANNO SAKO !	The closest match for "TANNO" is Mikio Hatano, director of KiKi KaiKai. "SAKO" might be Hiroyuki Sakou, who designed several Taito games in the 80s.
Jupiter	NISHIKADO KOMA !	"NISHIKADO" is Tomohiro Nishikado, creator of Space Invaders. This is a pretty unusual credit, as his last directed game was in 1980 and his first producer credit wouldn't be until 1991. "KOMA" could be Youzou Koma, whose only other credit was for Operation Thunderbolt.
Mars	SPACE RANGER !	Now this is just gibberish.

(Source: Original TCRF research)