The Many Secrets (and Bugs) of Bruce Lee for the Commodore 64 and Other 8-Bits

[@stefanocrespi5424]

Normal people when a game crashes says "oh, crap!" resets the computer and restart the game. Robin: "eheh funny, let's reverse engineer the code"

[@keithparker1346]

It's like forensic analysis of a crime scene

[@nodemgr]

This was my favorite game that I played with one of my best friends in the 80's on his C64. Good memories.

[@StCreed]

Same. I recently played it on a raspberry pi 4 with my son and got to punch him into the flames repeatedly :)

[@timkr66]

Many Friday nights there were joysticks tossed over games like this. Awesome times!

[@snorman1911]

Same! I remember thinking the picture of Bruce on the intro screen looked soooooo realistic lol.

[@erinwiebe7026]

Thank you for all the work you put into compiling this Robin. I haven't played Bruce Lee since I was a child. It sounds like we were playing it on our C64's around the same time too which is quite interesting to me. I have fond memories of it, and I distinctly remember how difficult the game was. I don't recall if I ever finished it, but I vividly remember having friends around, taking turns and getting very excited when one of us managed to get to a level we had never managed to see before. A real trip down memory lane of an old favourite game!

[@branchonequal]

That PAL crash was already driving me insane more than 25 years ago. Thanks for explaining what's going on! For me it most of the time happened on the screen shown at 16:55 which of course is extra infuriating as it's so close to the end of the game.

[@CarlintVeld]

Interestingly the same counts for me! How can that be explained?

[@branchonequal]

@@CarlintVeld Good question! Maybe that screen is special when it comes to timing (time to display or something).

[@kangarht]

for me the crash happend on another screen, BUT ALWAYS ON THE SAME SCREEN. I was saying my prayers when doing that one :)

[@kduhtdkzrt]

„Number one looks a bit suspicious there“, my thougts exactly.

[@WilliamPorygon]

Suspicious? I've never met anyone who didn't like the C64 version of $100,000 Pyramid! (...why yes, I've actually never met anyone who was even aware there was a C64 version of $100,000 Pyramid, but never mind that)

[@kduhtdkzrt]

@@WilliamPorygon It sure as hell isn‘t the game brought up in conversations when I and my friends talk about the good old days of home computing.

[@MurderMostFowl]

Yeah that was weird. The C64 version of Jeopardy was actually really good but I’ve never even heard of this game. ( by that I mean the c64 version not the tv game show )

[@merman1974]

It’s about how the search function works, means something with the number 1 at the start appears at the top of a list and gets most clicks

[@superx9619]

I remember playing Bruce Lee as a kid with my buddy and we thought we could cheat by playing co-op together against the ninja. Every damn time one of us would accidently hit the other and we'd turn heel and start helping the ninja beat up whoever was playing as Bruce Lee 😂

[@Tangobaldy]

I have watched everyone of your videos and found this one very interesting. When I watch your videos it reminds me how foolish I was to dispose of all my old tech from the 70s-90s. The stuff we have nowadays is not worth preserving. No character or quirks.

[@Tangobaldy]

@referral madness Because modern stuff has no style. imagine collecting a car from this era, they all look the same. Mobile phones from the 90s where collectable, now they all look the same. Pretty much everything is bad. As for gaming consoles they wont work in the future as all the online services will be gone. And I doubt a ps4 will last 50 years.

[@mikegarland4500]

I forgot about this game!! Wow, I'm watching this video and seeing some of the gameplay, all sorts of memories are coming back. I loved this game, played it a lot back in the day. Thanks for the rediscovered memories, Robin!!

[@davidpetzinger7667]

So many great memories playing couch co-op with my friend. Always love the moment when after being hit by Yamo the black ninja stops and stares at him for a half second, questioning this betrayal. After this momentary reflection, he just bolts the other direction towards Bruce Lee. Comedy gold.

[@bsvenss2]

Ohhh... sweet memories. 🤗 I loved to play Bruce Lee on my Commodore 64. One of my favourite games.

[@Zhixalom]

Why didn't somebody else make it, so you didn't have to? - Well Robin, I am quite happy that you did. Because as Stefano Crespi points out, nobody else seems to dive all the way down into the code to explain a bug quite like you do.

[@00Skyfox]

Yay! Bruce Lee is one of my all time favorite games! We always loved how the sumo would moo like the cow statue. The long distance punch is quite easy; it just requires the ninja and the sumo (why do you call him Yamo?) to be overlapping in their position. You can punch the air from across the screen and they will both get punched and pushed back. That’s handy on the first red screen with the trip wire torches on the floor because on the middle level, if you’re on the right and they both respawn on the left, you can punch them backwards into the torch and they get barbecued. That’s best when you’re on the second play through when there is fast respawning because you can keep racking up the points by killing them, at least until one of them respawns on the top level. Anyway, I’ve never seen many these bugs before despite playing the game a couple hundred times as a kid, and never had it crash. We only ever had a cracked version so never dealt with the copy protection schemes. I’m wondering if you could successfully copy it with that Kryoflux program.

[@Markusewitz]

Because Yamo was his name! :-)

[@omegapuschel]

I love your songs at the end, my favorite one is still "one is a monopod, two is a dwarf, four is a centaur". Amazing.

[@branchonequal]

Just came back to this video and had another go at the game (the Jack Alien version which thankfully doesn't crash, thanks again for the tip!). One secret which maybe not everyone knows is that if you hit Yamo five times (tested it by landing on his head five times in a row), you not only get a lot of points but Yamo also gets considerably stronger. You'll need to kick him nine times to defeat him. Another thing I observed was that if you land on him *many* times, he also seems to get more aggressive (at least he then tried to kick me more often and also had a reduced "kick cooldown time", i.e. he could kick a lot faster again after a kick).

[@alerey4363]

I always thought my 1541 had some bug when loading the dir in Bruce Lee and spinning forever without returning the prompt! Thanks for the explanation of the sector loop!

[@speedbird737]

Yep my PAL C64 here in the UK used to crash too when playing Bruce Lee - once it happened after clearing the above ground level - went back to the starting screen where the hatch slide open - it then crashed!

[@sterling7]

Something I don't think I've seen elsewhere- in the (C64) version I played, if you were pressing up-right when you entered the "treasure" room, it was sometimes possible to make Bruce jump off the ledge where he would normally jump up and down in "celebration" automatically, sending him flying into the treasure (where he would kind of stagger about, because it wasn't really a surface intended for player interaction.) Then, a few seconds later, the level would "reset" and put him back on the ledge before restarting the game for that second run.

[@doctorweile]

I remember another bug, I found rather annoying on the C64-version... when entering a gate (seen at 15:10) the game would often crash when entering one of the gates, leading to a certain room. I believe, it only displayed the dreaded "ready"-message in the upper left corner.

[@abgekippt]

I remember a bug at this screen too. I think you could avoid the bug by choosing or avoiding a certain entrance.

[@vanrose9857]

I experienced the glitch at 11:22 on the Commodore 64 as well. It was a game killer every time.

[@TheRetroChannel]

Damn, Robin throwing the long distance punch at 1:02 ice cold 😎

[@mike_qbik]

This was excellent.Thank you so much. Bruce Lee to date is my THE game which started it all for me. To date I play it time to time on my Virtual C64 on Mac and will probably get the Maxi.Looks like its been restocked finally after covid years of waiting.

[@4lpha0ne]

13:15 I remember that bug with the stuck Bruce Lee very well from the time playing it on my C64.

[@MikeMohawk]

Bruce Lee :) Played countless hours of that game together with my brother and nephew. It was refreshing that you could co-op with either Bruce Lee or be a pita with ninja or green yamo. Or like we used to call them: little bewew and fattie.

[@fuzzybad]

I archived all my original disks a few years ago with a ZoomFloppy, this title gave me a heck of a time! Eventually was able to make a working G64 image using a parallel cable. My copy is V3

[@8_Bit]

Aha, I need to get myself a parallel cable setup sometime. It really is incredible how an early title had such advanced copy protection.

[@fuzzybad]

@@8_Bit yeah whoever wrote that code knew their stuff! I suppose it was done in-house? This was before protection became somewhat standardized with Rapidlok, VMax, EA fat tracks, etc

[@seansretroverse9082]

@Dr. M. H. There's a 1990s recording of an old KansasFest talk on their site from the late Silas Warner (creator of Castle Wolfenstein) of the history of MUSE Software where he said the technique was invented by MUSE first, and they called it "Fake BASIC", and that they did this on Apple, Atari, Commodore, and even IBM. It's clever!

[@jdmresearch]

I loved the way you explained the PAL bug. Subscribed.

[@Dauerbomber]

One of those C64 games that i love to play still today. Great!

[@exidy-yt]

Datasoft was my favourite dev/publisher of the C64 era, even over EA. Besides Bruce Lee and Zorro, the first platformers I ever was into enough to win, they published the far-ahead of it's time CRPG series Alternate Reality, both the City and the Dungeon for the C64. While The City was a poor port of the Atari version, The Dungeon was complete and absolutely astounding. Many elements are not even used in todays games but should be! Anyway, Thanks for the input into Bruce Lee, lots I didn't know here!

[@Somelucky]

So that’s why Bruce Lee crashes so much more after my NTSC to PAL conversion. Thanks for the Remember release tip!

[@TheStuffMade]

Good video. I always loved this game, I think it's a well designed game with good mechanics, decent amount of content and it's not artificially hard unlike many early games where you'd just die without any chance to do anything about it because of some random thing.

[@reinhard3209]

Great video, thanks Robin! 👍

[@googleboughtmee]

Just checking out those other Datasoft games you mentioned on youtube, they look so similar to Bruce Lee and I had no idea they existed! Excited to try them now

[@wesley00042]

On the Atari at least, they also all share some of the sound effects.

[@shawbros]

They are all great games, but Bruce was king of the pack.

[@terosaarela4555]

Thanks for the insight on the crashing bug! Back in the day, the game was almost constantly crashing at a certain point for me.

[@BrunoB78]

about the long distance punch, maybe it gets triggered when there is ANY sprite collision happening? because in the video it happens when Bruce and the ninja are colliding. just a thought. nice video! 😊

[@8_Bit]

Yeah, I'm thinking the overlap is an important part of it.

[@FadkinsDiet]

That's exactly it. In fact the computer magazines of the day mentioned this as a hint for beating a game. When the yamo and ninja attack simultaneously, the yamo has priority, and the way this is implemented causes the ninja's hit on bruce to be interpreted as the yamo hitting the ninja.

[@FadkinsDiet]

The c64 video chip, the VIC-II, does keep track of which sprites are currently overlapping other sprites, so it should have been possible to implement it correctly. Maybe they took a shortcut.

[@BrunoB78]

@@FadkinsDiet yeah that's what I was thinking, maybe in the code the collision register is checked with a wrong AND operation, since the register tells what sprites are currently colliding withother sprites, but not which ones with which ones individually, so my idea is that is something like "if bruce is colliding + yamo is hitting then bruce is hit", that gets triggered even if bruce is colliding with the ninja while yamo is hitting www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Sprite#Polling_for_collisions

[@TheRetrospective]

Good idea about new year’s ritual with Bruce Lee. 😁 Nice catch with the scream of exploding fist.

[@flatfingertuning727]

A fun quirk I remember is that when in the vs. human mode, one got nine lives while in vs. computer one only got five, *but* if one selected "vs human" mode and never moved the green enemy, the game would eventually switch back to "vs computer" mode and take back the four lives.

[@KasumiKenshirou]

I knew that the computer would eventually take over, but didn't notice that the number of lives was different! When playing this as a kid with my brother one of us would control the Yamo and keep him moving but not attack the other person to make the game a little easier.

[@zidane2k1]

I never noticed that the game took the lives back either. But I remember to counteract this when I was playing by myself, I put the second joystick down on the floor and held the stick down with my foot.

[@kokosnood]

I would put a rubber band on the 2nd controller pointing down so Green Sumo would just yell :)

[@matt_b...]

This brings me back. I remember playing a ... "Borrowed" copy of Bruce Lee on the C=64

[@videogamebookreviews]

The sample in Exploding Fist: it's only recently that I discovered you can press the Commodore key to hear the sound again! At the time I would just press the space bar to make the game continue loading.

[@8_Bit]

Cool, I didn't know that either!

[@robmildon8612]

Spent ages playing this at a friend's house as a kid. The PAL crash (we lived in New Zealand) only ever happened in that one hub room where you have a choice of three exits. You'd clench every time the room loaded.

[@asgerms]

Now you had me starting up the Apple II to see if it also has the "infinite loop" bug, as I suspect the core code is kinda the same engine as C64/A800. I couldn't reproduce it though.

[@64jcl]

The 9th bit of raster interrupt is one I also spent days on trying to figure out when making Rocket Smash for the C64.

[@johnny88j9]

I loved that game. Very good video!

[@federicoalbesa3748]

That bruce lee "photo" was amazing to me !!!

[@chrisslatcher4686]

Loved playing Bruce Lee on my Commodore 64 when I was younger, thanks so much for the trip down memory lane. Cheers!

[@ctrlaltrees]

Great video as always, I've never even played the game and I was glued to the screen throughout. It's so much fun learning about these old bugs. 👍

[@kevincasteels2102]

I love the end song! Great tune and great video :)

[@BenceDobos]

We found out as kids that punching/kicking when any sprite collision happens register as a hit no matter how far the enemy is. We used that glitch so when Yamo and the ninja was near (overlapped) just kick in the air with Bruce Lee and they get an instant hit. I do not remember that you can do the same with Yamo. I suppose everybody got a hit who is part of the sprite collision and did not make an attack.

[@rich1051414]

I believe the issue with the long distance punch can be replicated if 1 player is near enough to hit a target while the other player is not.

[@seansretroverse9082]

Ok, there's another bug I have found that I call it the "Pacifist Bug". The version of the game I found this on is V1, and I have no idea if it exists in V2 or V3. It turns out the auto pause feature actually polls only the fire button, and not the directions. So, basically, if you try to play the game without fighting at all, i.e. not pressing the fire button, the game will auto pause before you can complete it. There's also a lot of fun play around stuff I would do, such as continually punching Ninja and Yamo into the fountains by a spawn point in one of the orange rooms. If you spend enough time on the screen killing them, they will eventually start immediately respawning as if you were already on the second play thru. The difficulty returns to normal after you leave the room as I recall. If you are interested in seeing some of these quirks, I have a complete double play thru of Bruce Lee on my channel, where I also spend a little time just screwing around doing fun things I used to like to do back in the day :)

[@FinsaneLorist]

10:50 had to take a deep breath for that LOAD of old school GOOD GAMES

[@jeeperscreepers8902]

I just got Bruce Lee 2 about a month ago. I have to start playing that one. I beat the first one numerous times.

[@retrobeastgames]

Bruce Lee is one of my top games, love how you cracked into the game a showed how things worked, very interesting mate, big thumbs up, Thank's :o)

[@timecapsule5604]

I remember playing the heck out of this game back when it came out still playing it today

[@donnierussellii4659]

The Lost Sectors recently posted their thoughts on this game.

[@CommodoreGreg]

I love it when people mention channels I haven't discovered yet!

[@8_Bit]

Cool, I watch them sometimes but didn't see this one yet. Thanks!

[@trelard]

I was only a bit pissed when I found out YEARS later (bought it on tape at the time of release for C64) that there was a game breaking bug in the version I owned at the time. No easy patches back then. LATER IN THE VIDEO EDIT: Yup, the bug I was referring to was the PAL version as mentioned. And the first time I completed it proper was with the Jack Alien fixed version. You also can't underestimate how popular Bruce Lee was when this was released. Great year for the C64 as well. I also got Ghostbusters for Christmas that year. That space bar kept me occupied and drove my parents up the wall that day LOL

[@dash8brj]

This was fascinating. My brother and I fought in this game (and often fought over what to play, our favourites being bruce lee and pit stop ii).

[@luxdico]

thx for explainin' the origin of the scream in explodin' fist. Goonies, Bruce Lee, Zorro, Conan ... all from Datasoft. Now it all makes sense :-)

[@lamtatyan]

Thanks for your great work. I also have been wanting to discover more about this game, as in my childhood I have zillions of imaginations about this game, like can I climb over the black object at the upper left of the first stage? Is there any more secret entries? How many rounds shall I complete so as to really finish this game? Although I am not happy that all of my imaginations about this game have been proven non-exist, I am still happy to see that eventually someone who is good in computer programming comes out and do a deep research about this game.

[@laszlotorok707]

Thank you! I loved the part where you explained the bug writing to $D011!

[@SinisterTarheel]

Bruce definitely one of my favorites on the Commodore. My brother couldn’t beat it, but I did.

[@blikketty77]

Bruce Lee, Zorro, and Conan were all great. I finished Bruce Lee so many times!

[@MultiRetroMan]

Love the bug where he keeps landing, if you can call it that, on the green guy. I don't remember ever seeing that Atari computer before :)

[@nielsroetert]

Played this game with my boys (17 and 12) a couple of days ago, and they loved it as much as I did when it originally released, such great memories. Awesome video by the way, my Commodore Security patches arrived today too, great day overall :p

[@RandyFortier]

People with names like R. J. Fortier are the absolute best programmers.

[@8_Bit]

Hah, is your middle initial J too? Even if not, small world.

[@RandyFortier]

It is, Joseph is my middle name.

[@rbrtck]

You'd better ask your like-named buddy, then, why he used all 8 sprites on the C64 to implement the 3 characters in this game, when he could have simply used 3 multicolor sprites? 😉

[@DavidYoud]

Nice analysis on the PAL crash bug.

[@rvsamsung77]

Oh sweet memories. All time favorite game... and the melodies and sounds. I never completed it... I properly never will 😥

[@8_Bit]

I encourage you to give it a try again, it'd be great to finish it!

[@asgerms]

What a truckload of new info (for me) about one of my favorite games. Love the relaxed vibe while going into assembly code explanation of why Bruce Lee would crash. Never crashed when I played it (PAL version, don't know which version), nor did I encounter the infinite loop thing.

[@ScottyBrockway]

NTSC has 263 lines on most 64s and 128s btw. 262 is only on VIC II R56A, which is the 64 cycles a line one.

[@davidinark]

One of all time favorite games for the c64!!

[@ChrisM541]

Thanks for this! After all these years I still love playing Bruce Lee. On the same theme of bugs, check out Exploding Fist II - another utterly fantastic game but does have one or two 'unusual' bugs. Half man, half volcano opponent comes to mind, lol.

[@espacemaxim]

One of my all time favourite games!!! Thanks for this!

[@CJ-rf9jm]

Summer of 85 my friends n I spent tons of time playing this game teaming up against the ninja who we all thought was a keystone kop. But we always called the 2 villains Sumo n Emo (emo was the ninja).

[@andymendez7710]

i had that game on cassette for c64 it took like a half hour to load. it took me forever but I finished it.

[@danieltornqvist6062]

Thanks for the intense walkthrough of featurea and bugs. This is still one of my favorite games. And just like you i play through it on the C64 often. However there is a Bug on the Zx Spectrum version that i have not aeen o the other versions. Where you on a screen with a "house" with stairs on the left side can actually go down into the ground. And therefore bit be hit. We used it as a pause function at my friends place. :-)

[@metalheadmalta]

I absolutely loved this game and spent ages with my best mate, who sadly passed away just three weeks ago... he donated his boxed C64 to me as well. :-(

[@8_Bit]

Sorry to hear about your friend's passing :(

[@stylis666]

Oh, so I'm not all that weird for combining New Years with going back to C64 games and having Bruce Lee at the top of the list XD I remember that that last "boss battle" confused me so hard that I just assumed that the game was bugged and I never actually got passed it until I saw a playthrough of it ~20 years later. My game freezing a lot probably had something to do with my mistrust as well. But seriously, Ron, WTF? XD That end boss is definitely in the top 10 of weirdest flipping bosses of all time. You get there for the first time, on your last life, boss is flashing, you hear a sound as if you get hit, assess the situation, you don't see anything coming at you that you can dodge, annnnnd you're dead XD

[@JimmYJammA2099]

RMC is great, love that guy!

[@bjrnjeppesen4445]

A funny observation I had, was the demo on disk version has a better playing Bruce lee, not just running and jumping randomly around, but actually solving some part of the game

[@wannabuyabridge]

I played this on the Spectrum 48k mostly (I'm in the UK). I remember completing it about 7 times in one go, as when you got to the end it would start again. The C64 one was harder.

[@chazmaru9583]

Very interesting research, thanks.

[@easyerthanyouthink]

Awesome video. Yep in aus indeed it used to freeze just like that.

[@Datan0de]

I thought I knew just about everything about this game. I was so, so wrong. :-)

[@littleloner1159]

I absolutely love your content. Thank you so much for making it.

[@TheHighlander71]

This was great. I played this loads on my Pal machine, but I never had it crash like that. I did play a cracked version from the 80's so perhaps that saved me. I'm still going to look for that 'remember' version. Thansk!

[@stephandusterhoft9131]

Oh Fantastic Game ! I play it on my Atari 800 XL . With only 4 colors . on the C64 look it better ! :-)

[@robadlers6668]

One of my favs for sure.

[@iz8dwf]

Definitely I've never seen a crash on Bruce Lee here, and I've played it a lot :) Of course, PAL C64 only in Italy in the '80s. I should check what version I have, if I happen to find the old (cracked) copy.

[@mikeroamsreddeer4858]

11:26 I can confirm that the C64 also does this; I distinctly remember that happening to me. Don't ask me what revision it was though...

[@CrassSpektakel]

Old games do not cooperate with fast loaders because fast loaders were rare to non-existante before 1985. The first ones only showed up in mid-1984 and it took years to become standard.

[@setSCEtoAUX]

I always really wanted to finish my (cracked) version of Zorro since I really enjoyed the puzzles. However, the repetitive music always drove me insane before I could do it. (I got better) I didn't realize there were others in the "series" that I might've had a better time with until now!

[@8_Bit]

The Zorro music really is... special. I wonder what the developer(s) thought of it at the time. Perhaps it was a very late addition to the game, or they just kept the volume off the whole time :) One really cool thing about the Zorro music though is how it changes into an extra echo-y, sombre version when in the underground maze. That was a really nice touch.

[@thelostsectors-play2399]

One of the problems we all had with cracked versions is no instructions. You can press a key to turn off the music. I think it’s S.

[@seansretroverse9082]

@@thelostsectors-play2399 Yeah I was about to say I recall turning off the music after a while. It did get REALLY repetitive for Zorro.

[@caeserromero3013]

Wonder how many people back in 1984 got the game home, opened the box, took out the disk and thought: "Damn, they've given me the Atari version instead of the Commodore version," and gone back to the store to complain 🤣

[@TheSimTetuChannel]

Robin: Why don't you make it, so I don't have to. Kung-fu audience: Ouch!

[@rolandgerard6064]

You make great video. The one on the C64 maxi was really great. Thanks.

[@marcusmalone]

Definitely agree with you in seeing this as the classic Datasoft 'quadrilogy' set!

[@1981patx]

Thanks for another unique insight on a childhood favorite of mine! :)

[@neilfarquhar716]

Great video! I really enjoyed it, lots of interesting things going on with this classic game. I'll have to check out those other Datasoft titles you mentioned as well. Retro gaming is really flourishing at the moment, and channels like yours are a huge part of it. Thanks for uploading, have a like and a subscribe. 👍🏻😃

[@daw7563]

Graphics actually looked better back then, fuzzy CRT TVs made it look better and our brains filled in the blanks, they were never intended to be viewed on pixel perfect displays 😉 I'm sad and guilty of putting numerous of perfectly fine CRT monitors and TVs into the the landfill... should have kept a couple around for my retro computers.

[@jasonmartin5488]

your channel goes from strength to strength

[@matttaylor1707]

On the Atari 800 version, while controlling the Green Yamo, pulling down on the joystick will make Yamo bellow like a cow, if I recall 🙂

[@RibbonPL]

Amazing video!

[@AE-bm4no]

Excellent video. The left handed option is huge for my left handed friend who comes over to play Bruce Lee. Edit: Did you play Bruce Lee Return of Fury (2019) for the C64? You could have fooled me that it was an official sequel.