Turtles (Arcade)

Turtles
Also known as: 600 (Konami), Turpin (Sega) Developer: Konami Publishers: Konami (JP), Sega (JP Alt), Stern Electronics (INT) Platform: Arcade (Galaxian hardware) Released in JP: November 1981 Released in US: November 1981 Released in EU: 1981 This game has unused enemies. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences.

Turtles is Frogger's unpopular cousin. A mother turtle has to rescue her children from a parking garage while avoiding cars or beetles (not the car kind), depending on what version you're playing.

Unused Graphics

There's an unused car graphic in Konami's set. Here it is. Look at it. Sure is a car.

Extra Life Value

The variable that controls the extra life threshold is stored in RAM address 8017, and is set on boot...but this value is always set to 5. At one point, they might have planned to control the threshold with a dip switch, like in other Galaxian-based games, but that obviously never happened and they went with a hard-coded value.

The aforementioned code comes before the game reads the Coinage / Cabinet Type and Lives dip switches and sets those variables in RAM, which supports this theory.

Version Differences

Attract Mode

Konami	Stern	Sega

• Each publisher has a different title for the game: Konami uses the enigmatic 600, Stern the boring but descriptive Turtles, and Sega has the more imaginative combination of "turtle" and "terrapin", Turpin. Konami's set also uses their logo for the copyright message, while Stern and Sega simply spell out their names in the game's standard font.

Original	Modified

• Since the mechanics of play were changed (see below), the gameplay demo had to be changed as well.

Gameplay

Lives

• In 600 and Turtles, the player starts off with 3, 4, or 5 lives, depending on the dip switch setting. In Turpin, this was changed to 3, 5, or 7 lives.

Kidturtles

In all versions, the player (the mother turtle) needs to collect all of the kidturtles on the current floor to progress to the next floor.

• In 600, the player has to collect all of the kidturtles at once before the exit appears.
• In Turtles and Turpin, every time the player collects a kidturtle, the exit appears. The player has to return the current kidturtle to the exit before they can collect any more. This greatly slows down the player's progress compared to 600.

Enemies

• The enemies in 600 are cars. The AI for these cars is set at the start of each floor and doesn't seem to change over time. All cars appear to be identical.

• In Turtles and Turpin, the enemies are beetles. The beetles start off with a dumber AI, just kinda ambling around the floor. They eventually turn orange and then blue, at which point they get much more aggressive in pursuing the player.

• There are one-to-two hidden enemies in the question mark panels, depending on the floor.
  • In 600, these enemies will be a normal yellow car, and a red racecar which moves twice as fast as other enemies.
  • In Turtles and Turpin, the hidden enemies are just standard beetles.

Bombs

Konami	Stern	Sega

• In 600, the player has a bomb supply that constantly replenishes itself, as indicated by the "ENERGY" meter on the HUD. The meter itself is actually 8 units long. However, the lower the energy meter is, the less effective the bombs are (i.e., enemies will be stunned for less time). The amount of time it takes for a unit of energy to replenish depends on the table below:

Building 1		Building 2
Floor #	Timer	Floor #	Timer
Floor 1	64 Frames	Floor 1	568 Frames
Floor 2	127 Frames	Floor 2	631 Frames
Floor 3	190 Frames	Floor 3	693 Frames
Floor 4	253 Frames	Floor 4	757 Frames
Floor 5	316 Frames	Floor 5	820 Frames
Floor 6	379 Frames	Floor 6	882 Frames
Floor 7	442 Frames	Floor 7	946 Frames
Floor 8	505 Frames	Floor 8	1009 Frames

From the third building onward, the delay is always 1009 frames.

• In Turtles and Turpin, bomb clusters will appear in the middle of the playfield that give the player three bombs each. There will always be a bomb cluster present when the player first reaches the floor and when the player respawns after dying. Bombs always stun for the same amount of time, and they'll also turn the beetles back to their least aggressive form.
  • The amount of time it takes for another cluster to appear depends on the cluster variable, which is equal to the floor number plus the number of clusters that the player has already collected on the current floor:

Cluster Var	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20+
Timer (Frames)	190	316	442	568	694	820	946	1072	1198	1324	1450	1576	1702	1828	1954	2080	2206	2332	2458	2584

Floors

Original
Modified

• While the layouts are identical between versions, the aesthetics are different between 600 and Turtles / Turpin.
  • In 600, the palette changes each floor and the wall graphics change every two floors.
  • In Turtles and Turpin, the palette and wall graphics stay the same, but the floor tiles change each floor.

Original
Modified

• In 600, the wall graphics and palettes keep changing in the latter half of the building, while in Turtles and Turpin, the floor tiles start getting recycled starting on the fifth floor. Each pattern in Turtles and Turpin takes five tiles (one for the floor and four for the bomb cluster), and there simply isn't enough room in the graphics ROM for more than four patterns.

Graphics

Original	Modified	Notes
		The mother turtle is less detailed in 600 and is animated twice as fast.
		The land mines are a bit more detailed and easier to see in later versions.
		The exit icon was changed from an "EXIT" sign to a little house.

In Turpin only, the mother turtle will start flashing when she has a kidturtle on her back.

Konami	Stern	Sega

In 600 and Turpin, the company name appears above the entrance to the building. As before, Konami uses their logo while Sega simply spells out their name in the game's font. In Turtles, the name is gone, but the "P" was changed to an "S" for Stern.

Konami	Stern	Sega

In 600, the climbing cutscene only has a single ladder with the mother turtle climbing on it. The later sets enhanced this by adding two more ladders and three beetles that chase the mother turtle.

Text

600 / Turtles	FIRST FLOOR	SECOND FLOOR	THIRD FLOOR	FOURTH FLOOR	FIFTH FLOOR	SIXTH FLOOR	SEVENTH FLOOR	EIGHTH FLOOR
Turpin	1 FLOOR	2 FLOOR	3 FLOOR	4 FLOOR	5 FLOOR	6 FLOOR	7 FLOOR	8 FLOOR

• The level names on the HUD were changed from "XST/ND/TH FLOOR" in 600 and Turtles to "X FLOOR" in Turpin, possibly to make it easier for non-English speaking players to read.

600 / Turtles	FIRST FLOOR	SECOND FLOOR	THIRD FLOOR	FOURTH FLOOR	FIFTH FLOOR	SIXTH FLOOR	SEVENTH FLOOR	EIGHTH FLOOR
Turpin	1F	2F	3F	4F	5F	6F	7F	8F

• The text in the climbing cutscene was similarly changed.

Music

Song #	Track	Origin
Song 1
Song 2
Song 3
Song 4		"The Old Gray Mare"
Song 5
Song 6
Song 7		"Yankee Doodle"
Song 8

Each game has different methods for playing music:

• In the Konami version, Song 2 plays on every single floor.
• In the Stern version, the game plays Song 1 on the 1st floor, Song 2 on the 2nd floor, etc. until the player reaches the 5th floor and the game cycles back to Song 1. Songs 5 to 8 are in the audio CPU but are never played.
• In Sega's version, the song played depends on the player's progress: The game plays Song ((floor(Y/2) mod 8) +1), where Y is the total number of kidturtles that the player has rescued. This ensures that all eight tracks will be heard in normal play if the player is sufficiently skilled.

Song #	Track	Origin
Song 1		"Mary Had a Little Lamb"
Song 2
Song 3		"Ten Little Indians"
Song 4

• The Sega and Stern versions cycle between four different songs during the climbing cutscenes. The Konami original only uses Song 1.