However, evidence suggests that another game may have beaten both of those titles to the historic punch. “That was the first and only game that I ever programmed and I think it was maybe one of the first games with a backdoor in it,” said Miner. “I didn’t tell people about this, even within Atari, for at least 30 years, but I had some code in there that if you did a certain sequence of controls it would say ‘Hi Ron!’ and give you 10 free games.” Amazed, Fries attempted this trick for himself and found that if the player holds down the phaser and start button at the time that they insert a coin into the machine, they will see the “Hi Ron!” message and be rewarded with 10 additional lives. That’s a pretty impressive legacy for a game that was loosely based on Star Trek ship designs, contained a singular goal, and has been largely forgotten by history until these recent revelations.
