The article investigates the mysterious first line of the 1980 Exidy Sorcerer BASIC game The Wizard’s Castle, which contains a REM statement embedding machine code for seeding the pseudo-random number generator (PRNG). By analyzing the Sorcerer’s memory and instruction set, the author and collaborators reveal that the REM text is actually tokenized machine code stored in BASIC’s linked-list program memory, executed via the USR() function to seed randomness using the Z80 processor’s R register. This illustrates a unique, low-level technique to embed executable code in comments on early microcomputers, highlighting the interplay between BASIC and machine code in vintage gaming and software.
10 REM”_(C2SLFF4
