This general hacker will sort you out if you want to get into anything that uses the Alkatraz loader, ie Cobra and Bobby Bearing. Don't try running it on it's own though: because you'll only get an 'Out of data' message: you need to bolt on the game data for hacking the game into line 190 onwards...

A very fast and popular scheme, used in all US Gold games. It's very easy to recognize:

• Single BASIC loader block. The header doesn't print the usual "Program:" prompt.
• A quite long turbo block with the usual blue/yellow stripes, followed by a pause of about 10/15 seconds. The loading sounds appear completely random without any repeated structure, like white noise, due to the heavy encryption pattern.
• The screen starts to load in a very fancy way, different from game to game; for example, you could see it appearing line by line from top to bottom or vice versa, or some regions could be loaded before others, etc. The block is preceded by a very short pilot tone, so short that it is hard to hear it clearly.
• After the screen has loaded, a three-digit countdown appears. The border is black without any stripes. The main block can be quite long, especially with 128K programs. It is very fast, nearly 151% of normal speed.
• In case of error, a b/w flashing message appears at the bottom of the screen and an annoying beep is played for some seconds, after which the computer is reset. The message says "Tape loading error: rewind & reload" or something like that.
• Level data are recorded in the same format, with yellow/blue stripes.

Click here to download this hacker (TAP format) or Click here to download this hacker (TZX format).

10 CLEAR 65000
20 LET T=0
30 FOR N=64223 TO 64316 : READ A
40 POKE N,A : LET T=T+A : NEXT N
50 IF T<>12120 THEN PRINT "DATA
ERROR IN MAIN BLOCK" : STOP
60 FOR N=N TO 1E9 : READ A : IF A<256
THEN POKE N,A : LET T=T+A : NEXT N
70 IF T<>A THEN PRINT "DATA ERROR
IN GAME BLOCK" : STOP
80 RANDOMIZE USR 64225
90 DATA 24,46,33,89,5,93,22,250,1,134,0,213
100 DATA 237,176,235,35,35,34,95,250,46,122
110 DATA 112,46,215,116,46,207,54,188,33,38
120 DATA 210,34,126,250,225,49,61,251,221,225
130 DATA 209,191,55,8,249,233,49,65,251,221
140 DATA 225,209,59,225,193,205,29,251,24,43
150 DATA 221,110,0,124,170,171,221,172,221
160 DATA 173,173,221,119,0,124,203,99,40,3
170 DATA 129,131,146,128,103,221,35,27,122
180 DATA 179,32,225,201
190 REM GAME DATA FOLLOWS