Retail Games with Hidden Debug Code

I imagine most people know about a few games like Mega Man 3 which Player 2's controllers had the ability to make you Super Jump and freeze enemies. I bet most people know about Sonic the Hedgehog's debug mode where you could put objects into play and move the camera around the level.

But what other retail games have hidden debug features? I didn't know this until today while talking to a friend. He said his friend was playing Super Mario Allstars (SMB3) back in the day and he would press select to change his "suit" from small, big, fireballs, racoon, tanooki, frog, and hammer bros. So we started to look into it and I found this: http://themushroomkingdom.net/smb3_lost.shtml

It mentions the NES SMB3 has a GG code where you can enable that select trick feature. I also found out apparently Nintendo accidentally shipped cartridges with this bit still enabled for Super Mario Allstars. Apparently none of these cartridge have even been dumped or atleast it's not in GoodSNES.

So I took the NES code and went to work and found similar code in the SNES Super Mario Allstars and figured out how to enable it in the regular retail rom. I made the changes into a game genie code for anyone interested in messing with it.

Game Genie Codes:
9A8B-A86F
018B-A8AF
8B8C-A6DF
4D8C-A60F

I'd still like to find one of the retail cartridges that has the select trick debug enabled and to dump it. But for now this code is pretty good. There are a few differences though. For one, this actually has the debug menu when you first press start. This means unlike the accidental cartridges I'm guessing, you can select if you want to start on world 1 or any other up to world 8. You can press A to "increase" your starting number of lives by 5. However due to changes in game code it seems that while this does work, before the game is initialized your starting lives are put back to 5. It seems that similarly you don't get the debug inventory of 1 of every item and the rest padded with P-Wings due to your inventory probably being cleared after the debug menu.

But you can still use the level select and the selcet trick which is cool.

So what other games have cool debug features that can be unlocked by patching the ROM or some kind of cheat code?

 

BMF's site used to be really fun to look at for newly-discovered cheat codes and debug menus in NES games. (It's a bit dead now...)

http://bmf.rustedmagick.com/cr/cuttingroom.htm

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYBnG1L3Oas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w22x-lWhoaI

In regards to that last video, is anyone here a gameshark expert? Is there a way to permanently patch a game with a gameshark code? I asked google, but the second you search with the word "gameshark", you get 9999 pages of unhelpful stuff.

 

Im not 100% seure about this, but i think you can do that using a hex editor.

 

I figured that much. The only major problem I am seeing here is that gameshark/etc codes freeze memory addresses, which im assuming is part of the machines RAM. I don't know if editting the iso manually would produce the desired effect.

If it would though, then I have to figure out some way to convert gameshark codes to physical addresses of the iso.

 

A lot of Square games for the Playstation have hidden Debug rooms. Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and Tactics along with Xenogears, Parasite Eve, and SaGa Frontier.

 

Doesn't work like that.

For cartridges, yes. I brewed up some Breath of Fire 2 cheat codes for betatesting purposes; one makes enemies die in one hit and affects the ROM, while the other one disables random encounters (and lets you walk on water) and affects RAM. As far as the hardware's concerned, there's no difference between ROM and RAM; it just asks for data at X address and gets what's stored there (except when cheat devices mess with this process, of course).

ISO's, though - and games for the FDS and DS, for that matter - get loaded into the RAM in pieces through storage access functions. This, however, means you can still modify the game's code in RAM (it will be in there), or find the code in the ISO/FDS image/DS ROM and modify it directly.

(As for FDS experience? I'm the guy who found out that Castlevania 2 really was translated properly; the villagers spout nonsense even in the original. You're welcome.)

 

im not sure that the gameshard codes themselves carry sufficient information about the iso addresses if they do operate by altering ram.
can't really say as i steer clear from any kinds of cheats so i don't honestly have any clue on how they work.

However if they do work based solely on ram, only addresses you will find from the codes would be ram addresses.

In that sence it would be very hard if not impossible to track down where the value in question was loaded based on the gameshark code alone.

This again leaves you the option of examining the game to see how the game itself handles the desired value and just rig it from the start. That will produce the desired effect but could be complex on some cases depending on if the game is compressed and/or encrypted. It also would have absolutely nothing to do with gameshark anymore so it would count more like plain hacking

edit: i geat beaten by someone with EVERY post i make ;_____;

 

Some good stuff in there. I didn't reailze the japanese version of Metal Storm had an intro that was cut from our version. That's a shame.

 

jeez, I'm having a hard enough time just getting the ff8 debug menu to work, let alone patch it into the iso.

Im using ePSXe, gameshark v4.0, the US ff8, and this code:

D00705E8 010F
800704A8 0001
D00705E8 010F
800704AA 0049

I just cant seem to get it to work. I tried select+L1+L2+R1+R2 on both controllers. nothing.

 

Final Fantasy VII's debug room is one of the craziest coolest discoveries I have ever seen.

 

I can think of Story of Thor 2 (Legend of Oasis), Silhouette Mirage, Dragon Force (all Saturn)and Cool Spot (Megadrive/Genesis) right now.

 

Back in the early 90s, I went to a video rental shop with a friend. They had a back room with video game consoles, and they charged you to play for an hour. They had import games. We played a US SNES game, I think it was The Duel: Test Drive 2. You drive a car and can get pulled over for speeding. Well, if you hit a button on player 2's pad (I think start), the car leapt in the air! I discovered this by mistake, and I think we used it to evade the Police!

 

YES nobody has mentioned mine yet!
Wario's land Super mario land 3
Gameboy original
Debug Code
in any given level pause
while paused press the select button 16 times.

 

What does it enable you to do?

 

it lets you hand-edit anything on the status bar; lives, coins, time remaining, etc.

 

This isn't quite along the same lines, but I thought someone might find it interesting. I've been doing a lot of research into my CD32 collection, including inspecting the files on the CD's (it's a regular ISO9660 file system, so you can read them in any PC). I've found a number of discs that include code like this in the startup scripts (s/startup-sequence, a standard file that Amiga's execute when they boot) :

This example is from The Big 6 (a collection of Dizzy games), though I've found similar code in at least a half dozen other games. Basically, it looks for a disk named "DebugDisk" and, if found, attempts to execute a file on the disk called "debugscript". I'm not sure if it's meant for patching the game or if it's some kind of development hook that the designers or game testers used. I don't have any of the development software myself, so I have no idea.

--Zero

 

My personal favorite is the Final Fantasy VIII debug room. I find it just fascinating. I wonder if there are any secrets...

 

I had completely forgotten about that old code. That brings back childhood memories...
I believe some people have found hidden stuff in Sonic Adventure for the DC and the PC versions.

 

Guardian Heroes have a debug mode too.