archive_page() from archive module in drupal 6 shows all nodes not date specific
I just tested archive page in Drupal 6.26 and using Archive 6.x - 1.4 . It is working as expected.  Maybe you are  date and month in the archive_page. Please find the detailed explanation below.

The parameters of archive_page() are the following ones:


$year
Number of year.
$month
Number of month.
$day
Number of day.


So print archive_page('all', 2012, 10, 12); will return the nodes created on October 12, 2012. I just followed the below process to verify the functionality.


I installed archive module
I enabled the module
I enabled content types in "admin/settings/archive"
I created two pages using Page one, and Page two as titles


Page one's authored date is October 13, 2012
Page two's authored date is October 15, 2012

I enabled the PHP filter module
I created a block with the below code, and enabled it on the right side bar

module_load_include('inc', 'archive', 'archive.pages');
print archive_page('all', 2012, 10,  13);



It does display the following output where only "Page one" is the one authored on October 13, 2012.