In the emulator

The pictures in the gallery are drawn from the ROM, without an emulator. This page is the other thing: what was checked by running the cartridge, which is the only way to know that a screen exists and looks the way the code says it should.

The harness is tools/omsx_capturas.tcl, on a Philips VG-8020 —a real MSX1 of the period— with the cartridge given on the command line:

CPK_OUT=work/shots CPK_TECLAS="16 BARRA;19 ABAJO;23 FOTO" \
  openmsx -machine Philips_VG_8020 -cart cabbagepatch.rom \
          -script tools/omsx_capturas.tcl

CPK_TECLAS is a list of second key pairs, and FOTO takes a screenshot. Keys are pressed on the key matrix, not typed: type would write the word.

What it settled

• The two set-up screens are what the code says they are. The first shows the kid inside a green frame with the four keys listed underneath — FORWARD, BACKWARD, CURSOR, END—, which are exactly the four actions 0x79BA turns a keypress into. The second adds --NAME-- and the name.
• The factory name really is ANNA LEE, and it is on screen before you touch anything.
• The park is called BABYLAND PARK, and the babies grow in cabbages. The sign is the seventeen tiles at 0x6BE5.
• The title screen credits © OAA,INC. 1983, which is not the same as the ©KONAMI 1984 of the play screen.

Two traps that cost a capture each

• Launched with -script, openMSX starts with the renderer uninitialized and screenshot returns a black PNG with rc=0. It has to be turned on by hand with set renderer SDLGL-PP.
• With set throttle off the machine runs flat out and the renderer skips frames, so the capture has to be asked for with the throttle on and with after realtime, which is wall-clock time.

And one thing the emulator would not give

Getting to the naming screen by pressing keys does not work if the option chosen on the menu is a joystick one, because then the game reads the joystick and the keyboard is ignored. Rather than fight it, the menu step is pushed on by hand —CPK_POKE="30 0xE001 4" writes that byte at that second—, which is the same thing the game does when it moves along, only without waiting for the right key.