After trying, and failing miserably, to hack Gradius !! for the NES, I decided to turn my attention to Puggsy for the Genesis/Megdrive. These addresses may be a little inaccurate, I am on a Mac, and the hex editor I find doesn't have the features I use from say FRHed on top of me not hacking in some time, especially with a hex editor - I am quite rusty. Text*: WELL DONE / LEVEL COMPLETE/ GET READY TO DEFEAT GUARDIAN/ ITEM BONUS / SCORE text strings: 0x3F234 - 0x3F3F8 LEVEL NAMES: 0x42520 - 0x428FC CREDITS, HINTS & TIPS, and GAME DEV FACTS: 0x4A004 - 0x4B2E8 COMPLETION NOTICES / COPY PROTECTION MESSAGE: 0x4B849 - 0x4BAB4 *unless otherwise noted, editable raw text, results visible without decompression or recompression of anything. Those are major text fields. There is still a secret, some other text, and the title sequence credits, but I'm too lazy right now - having just finished an hour of kickboxing with the runs.
Puggsy was such an awesome game. The programming behind it, the massive map and levels, the early signs of physics, and the amazing feat that it knows when it's not being played on a real megadrive. I'm sure there's heaps not found hidden in this game. I know that there is a secret island off the coast that's sposed to be only accessible in MegaCD version from what I gathered, but I actionreplayed there when I was a kid on my Megadrive. Anyone got any more information on the backside of puggsy? Hacking notes, or any other information?
I always thought that was more piracy protection, and that it knew when it was being played on a cart with SRAM (at least, disabling this option on kega fusion allows for actual play) Defenitely a great game deserving of hacking, though =)
There was a Wario Pirate at some point, apparently. :P Found the video a while back and it popped in my mind when I saw this thread and you said that. This game was pretty cool, I remember playing it at my cousin's when I was really little. Looking back, the engine physics are pretty neat. The way Puggsy moves alone reminds me of Chaotix or something.
Once I get DARWINE working, I will try to see if FRHed is one of the programs that will work with it, then I'll continue my hacking exploration... this hex editor I am using now is quite annoying.
idn't you finish the game? The credits sequence tells you how to get to the island! During the credits, you get a "very silly maths question"; if you do the math, it gives you a password which opens up a trail that goes all over the main island, through Aztec Games, and off to a six-level island shaped like a question mark. The secret levels aren't that flash, but they do feature big-busted Viking ladies... You can access a hidden demo screen with scrolly-wavy text and bouncing balls by finding the "Hidden Place" level and collecting the letters H E R O S in that order... I believe that would be the "developer's notes" mentioned in the first post... maybe. (if it features a thankyou to someone for the Wiz and Liz stuff, that is) It would be really cool to see some level maps made for this game; I'm sure that there are a few folks who never really found everything it had to offer.
Replied to a 2 year old thread post. Since then I installed a partition with XP on my Macbook Pro. [Thanks for bumping this, I need to jump on Puggsy hacking. Also started collecting data on Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine savestate hacking in the recent months]
Crap, didn't see the bumpness of this, damn you newbies, stop doing that XD Anyway, just grab IDA Pro and the hex editor in ESEII. Best generic hacking tools in my opinion.
Meh, needed Windows anyways - FS2004, and the OS X port of MAME at the time was not too good [especially when playing DDR 1st Mix and DDR 2nd Mix, or rather, getting them to work]. Now on an XP desktop, and getting alongwith ESEII's editor and FRHed
Hey guys! Over in another section of this forum I have posted a workaround to Puggsy's copy protection, which I guess qualifies as hacking. Here is the linky Basically this: 1) Load up the Puggsy rom image into a hex editor. 2) Scroll all the way to the end on the rom. 3) At the very end insert an additional 3 megs of blank data. 4) Save the rom. Now the real MD/Genesis hardware and most emulators thinks it's a much larger rom with dedicated SRAM. Now whenever Puggsy tries to write to the typical small-cart SRAM - the attempt fails, as that memory address is still occupied by the rom.
Games larger than 2MB use bank switching for SRAM, and if the game is not doing the bank switch write, then this method will work, otherwise it won't. I guess it doesn't bank switch then.
I've found Hardball '95 as a 3MB game that doesn't use Sega's banking (we found it by accident, as Gens/GS was not handling it properly). :/ I guess it depends on how a game is set up and that Sega was not willing to use more complex decoders(?). The only two 3MB games that sue Sega's mapper are Phantasy Star IV and Beyond Oasis/The Story of Thor, and I think the three games named here are the only games above 2MB that have SRAM.
I feel derpy asking, but can somebody help me with configuring IDA pro so I can sorta properly get Puggsy disassembled?
Load the ROM in as a binary file (or just drag it into IDA's icon), change the processor to Motorola MC68000, then just OK through everything until you see the disassemblyh window. Mark the data at ROM:00000000 as a longword with Q (this is the intiaial value of sp), then the data at ROM:00000004 as a label with O (this is the starting address). Hit Enter on this new label and hit C to start disassembling code. The rest of everything up to ROM:00000100 is a label; the ones at address $70 and $78 are HInt and VInt, respectively (the rest are errors, the external hardware interrupt, or trap instruction vectors). For Puggsy I think these are in RAM or disassemle to code that jumps to RAM so you will have to follow the RAM addresses with X.
