Ever since I first played Midnight Magic many years ago, I would swear the text displays changed now and then, for a split-second. I never saw these "changes" directly, only out of the corner of my eye, and of course the original text was always back in place before I could look. Once I knew about the 2600's flicker tricks, I told myself I was just seeing an optical illusion, a visual "jump" caused by my eyes crossing the screen while the graphics flickered back and forth. But I never was quite convinced.
More recently, while recording video to make screen captures, I caught those little glimpses again. Maybe now I could prove whether they existed, or if it really was just my eyes. Going through the video frame by frame, I discovered, little single-frame changes do exist! I'm not crazy after all! Not here, anyway...
So what are these brief changes? Subliminal messages? Blink-and-you-miss-it Easter eggs?
Unfortunately they aren't anything so exotic. My guess is a bug causes a glitch in the graphics, which is then repaired in time for the next frame. They seem to happen most often when the flippers are used.
Oh well, no shocking revelation here, but at least this nearly 30-year-old mystery is finally solved!