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The internet lies: cheat code edition

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Black Squirrel, Jul 9, 2022.

  1. BSonirachi

    BSonirachi

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  2. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    In Ready 2 Rumble Boxing you can choose the voice of your cornerman. You never see the cornerman, but you can hear him shouting stuff during the match. It's detailed in the manual.

    You can get a high pitched version by holding X+L+R.


    According to the internet, this equates to "Hidden Leprechaun Fighter". Except it's not a fighter, and not a Leprechaun. Well done lads.



    There's also 20 BMP files on the disc if you load it into a PC:

    [​IMG]

    Judging from the floor logo, these seems to be from a prototype.
     
  3. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    [​IMG]

    Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2 (which is a better game in every conceivable way) has so many cheat codes that until now, no single website listed them all. Some sites list the original game's codes alongside Round 2's, and there's a couple (like big head mode) that don't seem to work.

    [​IMG]
    There's also a code that unlocks more camera angles. It requires no less than 99 button presses to activate.


    Of course there's a reason these Midway-published games are loaded with cheat codes:

    [​IMG]

    it's so they could sell you a strategy guide. I'm not convinced any of these games actually need a strategy guide (they could have put the movelist in the manual) but, well... yeah.


    p.s. if you've seen my recent activity and also want to overwhelm yourselves with cheat codes for 20+ year old Dreamcast games, I won't be tackling NFL Blitz 2000 or NFL Blitz 2001, because I don't understand American football well enough to do these pages justice. NBA Showtime lets you play as the actress who portrayed Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat 3, but NFL Blitz lets you play as full fat Raiden.



    I also won't be doing NBA Hoopz. Not because it's particularly annyoing, but because I can't get it to run through Redream. It's meant to work, but it... doesn't.
     
  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Online cheat codes for MDK 2 are misleading. It's a more varied game than its predecessor, and some codes only work with certain characters in certain situations.

    Which is fine, and I would test all the permutations, but... there's no level select code, which means I'd have to play the game legitimately. That's a bit of a problem, not just because Redream only lets you have one save state without paying extra (seriously lads, come on), but because this is borderline unplayable on a keyboard.


    The Dreamcast doesn't have dual analogue sticks, so the de-facto control scheme for first and third-person shooters is to map movement to the face buttons. A, B, X and Y become the "left stick" while the Dreamcast's stick becomes the "right stick", with other functionality mapped to the D-pad and shoulder triggers. It works reasonably well on a Dreamcast controller, but when mapped to a digital keyboard through emulation, the WASD TFGH OPKL and [] keys (using Redream's default layout) are all getting used.

    Given you need to play reasonably well in MDK 2 to get to the Max and Dr. Hawkins levels... yeah, let's pick something that's less work.
     
  5. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/437055-18-wheeler-american-pro-trucker/cheats

    None of these cheat codes work for 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker (save for the long-winded description of clean pause, and even then they've listed more buttons than necessary).

    If you press the A button on the main menu, you'll select something. So this doesn't work.

    Same again.

    And this triggers a software reset.

    Very poor showing.
     
  6. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Daytona USA 2001

    https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/437903-daytona-usa/cheats


    [​IMG]

    -_-


    I'm half willing to forgive this one though. This code is for the Saturn version, and in the US, the "2001" was dropped, making things confusing and dumb.

    On the plus side:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    That's almost a full set.


    Fun fact: it took me a while to find this easter egg all those years ago, because before Sega Retro, it was badly explained.



    And for the record, you can still play with the slot machine and finish the race backwards in Daytona USA 2001, but I don't think you can make Jeffry dance. Boo.
     
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  7. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Saturn)

    Even TCRF is wrong about this one.
    Not quite.

    There are two debug options: "DISP" and "DRAG" (maybe three - I'm seeing "INV" nearby in the game data, but that might be something different).

    [​IMG]
    DISP: Options screen -> hold L+B+Y and press left on the d-pad. Draw more stuff on the screen.

    [​IMG]
    DRAG: Options screen -> hold L+X+Z and press left on the d-pad. Hold L and use the d-pad to move about the level freely.

    No need to hold five buttons and go in and out of menus.


    Doesn't make the game any better, but I'm going to guess these errors have been circulating for 25 years.
     
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  8. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    RE: that Japanese site in the mirror topic:

    https://segaretro.org/Sega_Retro:Todo/Sub-pages#Japanese_stuff

    I've spent the weekend sifting out the stuff we already had, and what's left is... a lot. Some of these are less "cheats" than "bugs" but we still care. Some translations are still wrong.

    I haven't tested much yet, but here's proof there are things still out there:
    [​IMG]
    If you press A+B+C+Start on the Wolf Team logo in Dino Land, you get some colour bars. Same thing happens in El Viento (which we knew about). Didn't find it in other Wolf Team games, but who knows - they like to hide stuff.
     
  9. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Konami Antiques MSX Collection Ultra Pack has a couple of undocumented features.

    [​IMG]
    If you hold Z while selecting a game, the game window is stretched to 320x192. I have no idea why you'd ever want to do that, but whatever, it's your life.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    But you hold Y instead, you get some... dark blue borders? On the right is the normal view.

    It's described here as "portrait mode", but if that were the case, I'd expect the visuals to be turned 90 degrees.

    [​IMG]
    And yes I did try with vertical shooters like TwinBee - you don't get a larger play area, just blue borders (I didn't crop the window with this one, so there's the full 352x240 as proof).

    I am acutely aware that Konami did some weird things with the MSX, and I haven't checked all 30 games. I am I missing something?
     
  10. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I've sifted through the Mega Drive/Mega-CD pages. Most of what's left is either "awkward", "unrepeatable" or is more about optimal strategies for winning (or in some cases "this is how the game works").

    But yes, plenty of stuff that hasn't been documented in the West (until now?), alongside some other nuggets, including:

    [​IMG]
    Dural tournament in the 32X Virtua Fighter

    [​IMG]
    Tiny UFOs in Dynamite Duke that only appear on certain difficulty settings in the Japanese version.

    [​IMG]
    A knock-out counter that only appears in the Japanese version of Streets of Bare Knuckle II.

    [​IMG]
    Alternative palettes in Chase H.Q. II, if you want your not-Ferrari Ferrari to be yellow.

    [​IMG]
    And a curious running theme about being able to maniuplate 3D things with the second control pad. Virtua Racing Deluxe, Contra: Hard Corps and Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer all have such a feature - I'm going to guess there's more.


    I've also lightly touched the Game Gear list:
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    There's a glitchy menu in Taisen-gata Daisenryaku G where you can directly manipulate the colour palette and completely ruin the look of the game.
     
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  11. Chimes

    Chimes

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    I know the treasure mcdonalds game has a hidden feature to manipulate the 3d models but that doesn't use the second controller.
     
  12. Bobblen

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    Surprised to see we were missing a megadrive Outrun code. Makes you wonder what else is still out there even in the famous stuff!
     
  13. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Crazy Taxi is a pretty important game (and a very small one), why has it taken so long to put cheats up?

    https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/196990-crazy-taxi/cheats

    Dicking around with the third or fourth controller is an instant turn-off because I genuinely don't have enough keyboard keys to (comfortably) handle them all. But I needn't have worried (even if I had read it correctly), because it's a load of old garbage.

    https://uw.netlify.app/details/dc/130
    The clue was that these Japanese codes never talk about needing port C (except for the one case where it does actually matter: see below). But they've over-complicated things too.

    Most of the codes in Crazy Taxi can be performed with one controller in port A*, and you just need to hold inputs on the loading screen before the character select. For "No destination mark" it's L+start, for "No arrows" it's R+start and for "Expert mode" it's L+R+start (which is basically just the first two options under a new name). "Another day" and the taxi bike codes are triggered within the character select screen itself - none of these need a second controller in any of the ports.


    However, there are view modes that become available if a second controller is plugged into port C. But even then it's not strictly "start+B" as GameFAQs describes - you press start to essentially "turn on" port C controls - after that you can just press face buttons.


    *complex point I can't be bothered to test. Officially you are meant to be able to play Dreamcast games regardless of which controller port you use (but leftmost takes priority). So when these cheats talk about "port A and port C", in theory they should work with "port B and port C". What happens with just port C or "port C and port D"? no idea.


    btw

    [​IMG]
    "no destination mark"

    still kinda got a destination mark there, Crazy Taxi.

    And marvel at the road markings not being affected by shadows - I think that's an emulation bug that I only noticed after I'd uploaded the screenshots. Ooops.
     
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  14. Bobblen

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    In the PC version at least, no arrows definitely means no arrows!
     
  15. muteKi

    muteKi

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    I don't have a copy of the original DC Crazy Taxi to compare against, but I wouldn't rule this out being an emulation bug
     
  16. Bobblen

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    Next time I'm in front of a PC I'll try it in Demul with max accuracy settings. No guarantees there either but another data point!
     
  17. I do have a Dreamcast to test with, but I don't have Crazy Taxi to check. My gut says emulation error for the shadow layering error and possibly the not-removed arrows, but I don't want to say that's definitely the case without trying on hardware to say for sure.
     
  18. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    By "mark" I think it means the boundaries of the area you're meant to stop in. The code removes the walls, but not the lines on the floor.

    Whereas in Crazy Taxi 2:
    [​IMG]
    No walls or floors. The arrows are a different thing.

    Could be an emulation issue in the first game, or an oversight.
     
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  19. Bobblen

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    The Wonder Boy III passwords are a common source of internet dodginess. For Master System at least, the only genuine hardcoded 'cheat' password is the famous 'WE5T 0NE 0000 000', all the others are just flukes that happen to pass the checksum and have some kind of desirable effect. I assume Game Gear is the same, but I don't know for sure as the SMS version is the one I'm very familiar with,
    Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap: The Password Generator (smspower.org)

    There's also a tonne of hidden stuff in game, debug shortcut doors straight to the bosses if you have 99 charm stones, tasmanian sword which lets you change form at any time, and much more. Definitely on my to do list to tidy up our version of the page!
     
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  20. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I did wonder - the Game Gear passwords on SMS Power (and elsewhere) give you some odd stats, which aren't indicitive of them being super legitimate.

    Passwords are an issue all across Sega Retro. I don't know which are legitimately given by the game, and the only way to find out is to play through everything (or watch someone else on YouTube).