GoKawiil2026-07-21
10 REM"_(C2SLFF4
Let's dive into The Wizard's Castle (source code)!
10 REM"_(C2SLFF4
That is the first line of the 80s microcomputer BASIC game The Wizard's Castle initially written for the Exidy Sorcerer platform.
It's a REM ark statement, a comment in that particular language. 10 is the line number, if you're unfamiliar with languages that had such things.
But the interesting part was this "_(C2SLFF4 mess. A typo or garbage? No. It appears verbatim in the source code as originally published in the July, 1980 issue of Recreational Computing.
What the heck is it?
Note: I'm going to jump back and forth between decimal (which is BASIC-friendly) and hex (which is programmer-friendly). Hex will be prefixed with 0x , suffixed with h , or will obviously have digits A-F in it.
Note: Thanks to Josh and Chris, my hacking buddies, for doing tons of the emulator and research work on this. It took hours, but they were good hours. It would have taken me 10x as long without their help.
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