Spent the tiniest bit of time on this - it is incredibly common, but the implmentation isn't consistent. Some games have X+Y as a on/off switch, others force you to hold the buttons, and there were definitely cases on the Saturn where you couldn't "undo" a clean pause without unpausing first, so I imagine the Dreamcast is similar. And sometimes pause menus still work, even though you can't see them. There are some obvious reasons why you wouldn't want to mandate this feature - pausing in a game of Puyo Puyo Fever might give you an advantage, for example, so they hide the playfield (as they do in all Puyo Puyo games worth their salt). GameFAQs only lists a couple dozen games, I'm certain there are hundreds of Japanese-only titles that have never been tested.
It never takes long to find an outlier: -> Virtua Tennis 2 (PAL)'s "clean" pause removes the menu... but doesn't un-darken the background... so it's a borderline useless feature. I'm hoping(?) this is an emulation issue - the feature wasn't documented so I wouldn't have expected Redream's developers to know. I've got a few Dreamcast dumps here so I could take title screen screenshots. The selection is a bit random, and of the four or five games I tested, half had undocumented clean pauses (Tech Romancer! Pen Pen!). I reckon there could be at least a couple hundred that haven't been recorded - more if you start including demo discs. Fun fun fun.
Amazing https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/576328-langrisser-millennium/cheats I was attempting to tackle some low-hanging fruit by covering games which only had the clean pause feature listed as a "cheat", and... turns out the clean pause doesn't work in Langrisser Millennium (or at least not for the pause screens I can see - as a Japanese strategy game, it's impenetrable). So not only is this feature often undocumented, when it is written down, it could be wrong!
Oh yeah uh, that would be me heh. I made that video precisely because I was fed up with seeing so many vague hints. With the best of my ability I think that list is thorough and complete.
Ha! Round in a big circle, nice video :-) the only thing left to do would be to start disassembling and trying to catch the game scanning for button presses. Bit beyond my skillset I'm afraid.
Evolution of a cheat menu, 3 FIFA games (94, 95, 96), 3 consoles (MD, MCD, SAT), same cheats, same codes! Apparently Fifa 96 Mega Drive has them too but has locked them behind winning some astonishingly difficult practise modes. At least they saw the light when it came time to do the Saturn version :-)
I figured since I was working with Virtua Fighter 3tb, I might as well check its cheat codes (or at least some of them - I don't trust the emulation as the soft reset doesn't work). https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/199201-virtua-fighter-3tb/cheats#virtua-fighter-3tb Given that she appears on the box, I'm guessing "playing as Dural" is something people might want to do, and yet nobody's checked if any of this makes sense. These two codes are valid, but not for the same version of the game. Up, Down, Right, Left, Start (note, not "left+start") works in the overseas releases in every mode. This will highlight Dural, after which A nets you the silver version and Start+A gives you gold. Simple. The "Training Mode Only" code only works in the Japanese version. And... may be the only way you can play as Dural in that version of the game. That is to say, she's not available in normal play (or if she is, there's nothing documented as to how it's done). Spoilers: Training mode is very different overseas, and is probably the biggest change that occurred within the 8 months between launches. But even though I'm not sure you can play as Dural in the Japanese version in "Normal" or "Team Battle" modes... you can play as the alphabet character. Video games.
I remember doing the cheats for vf2 pc and being more irritated than i should have been that i couldn't get the alphabet character thing to work. Why would every other Saturn code work except that one!? In conclusion, virtua fighter secrets are confusing!
This one looks pretty thorough and mentions jp vs us differences https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/199201-virtua-fighter-3tb/faqs/17588 Testing will be a slog though!
Great news! Some of these are also wrong. I think. I'm not sure you can do this - it'll just pause the game. This is X+Y like other Dreamcast games, except in Redream at least, it's the same issue as Virtua Tennis 2 - the screen remains dark. I don't know if this qualifies as a "semi-broken clean pause" or an emulation bug. I don't have the patience to fiddle with this - the cheat page on GameFAQs attributes it to the Model 3 version, and on the Dreamcast by default, this is A+B+X+Y+Start... which performs the software reset. I assume "do this with the stick" means the arcade stick, but I'm not sure Redream supports changing the controller type. (this also assumes the Dreamcast can tell the difference between an arcade stick and the regular controller. I think it can, but I might be getting confused with wheels or the Saturn or a bazllion other things. And again, not sure I can test without juggling multiple emulators and argughdkjsa) Oh and also... the software reset doesn't work properly in VF3tb. As a recap: 1) During gameplay, it should take you back to the title screen 2) On the title screen, it should take you back to the BIOS In Redream, the game does 2), but not 1). The Japanese version takes it back to the menu (and freezes), while the US version crashes the emulator. Sega games not following Sega's own guidelines is something worth documenting, but it requires a healthier state of emulation than what we currently have.
That change views thing does seem to have snuck in from the arcade list, you just use the triggers on Dreamcast. It's also not hidden, it's in the manual! Also having a read under youtube videos can also be quite fruitful, tends to bring out the experts! This arcade faq includes a bit of info on the face, which you correctly identified as one of the programmers. Wayback Machine (archive.org) Easter Egg: At the character select screen on OB vs mode, enter the following: Taka, start, Sarah, start, Lau, start, Kage, start, Akira, start A small headshot of one of the VF3 programmers (Manabu Tsukamoto - motion design programmer and "planning support") will appear in place of Lau's small headshot.
Debug mode works on the arcade version, you do indeed hold all 4 action buttons and press Start on the 'Sega presents' screen. How to do this on DC without triggering the reset is a mystery, maybe the arcade stick does bypass it. Neither redream nor demul specifically emulates it though, so can't check.
Trouble is there's just so much rubbish out there, you're probably better off picking your favourite game and seeing if Sega Retro is missing anything. That's how I started! I wonder if we're the biggest 'verified codes only' site on the net? Got to be up there, it's a great resource for this sort of thing.
Just in case, the continue code that you enter on the continue screen works. In the Japanese version I had to enter the sequence several times before it worked, though. It worked on the first try on the US and Euro versions. I tried all the StarFighter 3000 codes. Here are my results: The codes do not work on the US version. All the codes work on the European version, except FLOOD, PIZZA, DEMO, and CREDITS. All the codes work on the Japanese version, except FLOOD and CREDITS. Also, some of the descriptions for the codes don't really explain what the codes do. DANIEL DEFOE does not give you a "megaship", what does give you is you max stats and powerups. SHOW ME shows you "Xs" on the map. I assume those are the hidden bonuses. ROGER THE CAT allows you to select any stage right from the start. WAG allows you to pick the rank/difficulty. VIDEO SLUG shows you all the FMVs one after the other. I've never seen cheats in Sega Retro. Can you tell me where to find them? *edit* Forget it, I found it now. The menu is at the bottom of the page, which is kind of... weird. Normally menus are on top or to the sides.
@ReyVGM nice testing! How's your tomb raider knowledge? It drove me up the wall that i couldn't find an all weapons cheat for Saturn which worked. Closest i got was discovering newgame+ is there if you finish level 1 normally after completing the game.
So hey, I actually have (NTSC) Virtua Fighter 3tb on real Dreamcast hardware. I got it (along with most of my DC games) bundled with the console when I purchased it from a friend in 2002. I shunned the game pretty quickly as Dead or Alive 2's better 3D models and actual pause menu had this game leave a sour taste in my mouth. Emulation quality shouldn't matter for the Dural code, but I verified that it works. The X+Y clean pause works, the screen stays dark but the "PLAYER 1 PAUSE" text disappears while you're holding the buttons down. The A+B+X+Y+START combo works as described: In matches, it takes you to the title. On the title it immediately takes you to the console BIOS.
Nice one @SoNick , Demul works as you describe as well. Gives me a bit more confidence to continue testing with that particular emulator. Also strongly suggests no debug mode on console either, nothing I can find online suggests the arcade stick behaves any differently to a regular controller. Chalk that one up as another arcade only code that someone assumed worked on console but no-one actually tried it.
