Does anyone know of a setup code specifically for Chuck E. Cheese locations? Because there's a couple of ASCII phrases burned into every BIN ROM I've scanned.

WELCOME TO/CHUCK E. CHEESE'S/WORLD PARTY!
Welcome to/Chuck E. Cheese

Plus five character names (CHUCK E, HELEN, MUNCH, PASQUALLY, and another name I forget). I wonder if their images are also burned in the ROMs as well.

Also, the phrase:

THE OFFICIAL PINBALL OF TPO,JAPAN

is in every ROM.

SUBJECT TWO:
There also appears to be an embedded command language in Stern ROMs. I've found sixteen UNIX-like command-line utilities, and a number of switches. You can hook up a USB device to a pin and do diagnostics? That would be very useful.

Just reporting in on some unusual things.

So, apparently Stern has pre-set settings for when a machine is located at a Chuck E. Cheese and this dates back quite a long time. One mystery solved.

Next item: Data East ROMs usually have blocks of code that were obviously in earlier games but were not zeroed out before the next ROMset was created. Tommy has blocks of code in it from Last Action Hero, and I'm not talking reused code either, unless there's an Eye Bonus or a Find Benedict mode in Tommy.