Jul -- The Cutting Room Floor: Weird Discoveries

Foxhack
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Posted on 01-13-14 11:48:13 AM (last edited by Foxhack at 01-13-14 11:48:45 AM)

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Originally posted by nensondubois
Duel Masters J.gba has a debug menu. The problem is that I can't seem to find any release date information about the game anywhere.

Try checking http://homepage2.nifty.com/gamedatabase/software/DB_NTM3_GBA2003.html - I used this back when I was still working at MobyGames.

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Posted on 01-17-14 08:20:13 PM

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Sega Smash Pack for GBA "falls victim" of converting games which ran at higher resolution to the GBA, resulting in a lot of stuff not visible, but still in the map. To give easy examples(due to me being quite sleepy now

):

Link here

There's also the whole Ecco title screen with Novotrade'x copyright intact. There's lots of stuff there.

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Posted on 01-19-14 06:16:52 AM

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So SockFolder just accidentally found a debug function in Symphony of the Night that gives all valid inventory items, relics, and familiars (including the Japanese-exclusive one). It puts you in the inverted library, but the exit door exits back to the normal library.

ReyVGM
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Posted on 01-19-14 06:22:58 AM

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Can anyone look into this?

In the Game Boy Bionic Commando, there's a door that's embedded in the rock wall in Area 16. There's no way to reach that door. Can someone make a walk through walls code and see if that door leads to a hidden room or maybe to Capcom headquarters?

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Montassar2092
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Posted on 01-19-14 07:33:07 AM

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Originally posted by ReyVGM
Can anyone look into this?

In the Game Boy Bionic Commando, there's a door that's embedded in the rock wall in Area 16. There's no way to reach that door. Can someone make a walk through walls code and see if that door leads to a hidden room or maybe to Capcom headquarters?

Wouldn't be unusual to have special warps in inaccessible places on maps. Terranigma had lots of these.

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Posted on 01-22-14 06:21:11 PM

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Spelunky HD

http://mossmouth.com/forums/index.php?topic=4061.0

This topic details some errant lightmap problems, some of which show maps for objects that didn't make it in the final version of the HD game.

I also came across one of the first pics of the HD remake, when it had HUD elements and details similar to its classic style.

http://www.reddit.com/r/spelunky/comments/1v6cc9/one_of_the_first_spelunky_screenshots_kinda/

Foxhack
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Posted on 01-22-14 07:18:22 PM

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I just beat the crap outta Deadpool (PC) and decided to check out the game's files. There's a ton of unused audio content, including stuff that hinted at Deadpool being able to crouch and take cover. But that's not Deadpool's style so they scrapped that.

There's also leftover graphics files from a Transformers game. I'm not sure which since I don't own then, but I think it was the third one.

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Posted on 01-23-14 04:55:08 PM (last edited by Eon at 01-23-14 04:58:43 PM)

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Metroid Zero Mission has redundant English subtitles for the intro sequence. Found by forcing the language bit with 33000020 0003 (US version).

Peardian

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Posted on 01-23-14 08:36:40 PM

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Interesting... is anything like this present in other language versions?

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Eon

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Posted on 01-23-14 10:17:18 PM (last edited by Eon at 01-23-14 10:18:09 PM)

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I don't think so. All other languages use subtitles, the big text is still English even for China.

nensondubois
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Posted on 01-24-14 06:13:11 PM

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The US releases of Pokemon Blue and Red contain the full tileset of the original Japanese 'Pocket Monsters!' logo for the Super Game Boy borders. The European versions overwrote the logo as needed. It is unknown why Nintendo did not replace the tiles to say 'Pokemon' instead of remapping the original tiles out of existence.

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KungFuFurby
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Posted on 01-24-14 07:11:33 PM

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I am in the process of discovering brand new levels previously inaccessible because of a bank switch bug. The bank switch bug in question swaps high and low bytes. Amusingly, the third bank would have had a working bank switch if all of the levels were cleared, but then it would switch to a Hercules level

The game in question going first? Billy Bob. I even found a new sound effect sample that I suspect is not in the NSF rips (it's a player death SFX, and I believe it's in DPCM format)! Billy Bob seems to have a lot more to the game than expected, as I ended up counting 16 levels in the entire game. There is a catch: there is no ending to the game to my knowledge, as all that seems to be programmed at the very end is a jump back to the first bank, which means one of two things: back to the Title Screen, or back to level 1.

Stay tuned... I'm still discovering new material... and I'm performing a level count on each one.

nensondubois
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Posted on 01-24-14 07:47:50 PM (last edited by nensondubois at 01-24-14 07:50:56 PM)

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Originally posted by KungFuFurby
I am in the process of discovering brand new levels previously inaccessible because of a bank switch bug. The bank switch bug in question swaps high and low bytes. Amusingly, the third bank would have had a working bank switch if all of the levels were cleared, but then it would switch to a Hercules level

The game in question going first? Billy Bob. I even found a new sound effect sample that I suspect is not in the NSF rips (it's a player death SFX, and I believe it's in DPCM format)! Billy Bob seems to have a lot more to the game than expected, as I ended up counting 16 levels in the entire game. There is a catch: there is no ending to the game to my knowledge, as all that seems to be programmed at the very end is a jump back to the first bank, which means one of two things: back to the Title Screen, or back to level 1.

Stay tuned... I'm still discovering new material... and I'm performing a level count on each one.

I have found that there is also more unused music in Action 52 discovered when corrupting the game about two(?) years back. The music played a bit too fast and I couldn't recognise the tune. Cheetamen92 found some secret levels in French Baker that apparently has more levels.

While you're at it, maybe worth checking out how Ooze Bankswitches because there might be more unused music.

There is a lot more to Action 52 that we do not have documented, though we already know that Active has indeed plagarised sound drivers from other games.

I already have too much on my plate to do anything with Action 52 at this time.

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xdaniel
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Posted on 01-24-14 10:06:28 PM

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>>ESTABLISHING LINK...DONE.    >>FETCHING POST DATA...DONE.    >>EXECUTING POSTDISP.BIN...

The Quest 64 map modifier has been rediscovered recently(?): http://en64.net/archives/Quest_64.html

80084EF3 00xx, 80084EE4 00yy

Now as far as I remember from way back when this was first discovered, this is kinda similar to how the Zelda's work: one of the addresses is the "scene", while the other is a "room" within that. I think there's also been an entrance modifier, to select which entrance the game should use for the player, because you could get stuck outside the map otherwise. Not sure if I remember 80085368, given as "Current Stage/Level" at that page. Might be an easier way to load maps?

And I'm 99% sure there's been some unused stuff in there, which is why I'm posting about this here! Take those other memories of mine with a grain of salt, tho, but at least the basic codes are out there again.

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KungFuFurby
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Posted on 01-24-14 11:12:00 PM

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Truth be told, I have no music/SFX modifier for Action 52. I only have level lookup at the moment. I did attempt one for Cheetahmen II, but I'm going to have to determine how to access the music/SFX routine, as I currently have no clue on that regard (I'll use Action 52 as a reference instead once I figure it out).

I'll check Ooze as I go along. So far, bank switching is done by storing a two-byte value to direct page FE (that also means direct page FF is involved), followed by the accumulator acting as an extra data byte for bankswitching. Then you jump to the start of the next set of bytes (which is almost always $8012 in whatever bank you're going to next... there's bound to be exceptions, and currently, Billy Bob makes that mistake once... it's supposed to go back to the Title Screen, but it switches to its first bank, where the main menu is, and crashes instead because it jumps to a bad spot. It is valid if you get rid of the bankswitching just to note... but the code that's there is simply a proper jump back to the first bank for the game).

einstein95
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Posted on 01-24-14 11:32:06 PM

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Dig Dug II (Arcade) uses a hex byte to store the level number (like 09, 10, etc.) while map id is stored as hex (09, 0A, ...). This may indicate unused maps, as the levels roll over at 99.

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ReyVGM
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Posted on 01-26-14 04:43:38 AM

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Anyone willing to check that Bionic Command (GB) door I posted above?

nensondubois
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Posted on 01-26-14 05:12:47 AM

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Originally posted by ReyVGM
Anyone willing to check that Bionic Command (GB) door I posted above?

Maybe tomorrow. Also interested in restoring the Pocket Monsters logos in Red, Blue, Gold and Silver... and Crystal for what its worth.

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devin

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Posted on 01-26-14 11:03:13 AM

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Originally posted by devin
Originally posted by Xkeeper
I wonder if you could hack that to read from, say, a byte in RAM. In which case, well, Lua

I took another look at the actual monitor program code, and all the text is displayed by writing it out to the same interface used to connect the keyboard, rather than actually displaying it on screen.

~~Oh well, at least the text is still there.~~

Edit: Since I'm bored, here's a hacked up ROM that uses RAM instead of a serial connection. Lua away

$7FFFFD: keyboard input as ASCII (00 = no key; held down keys are handled by the ROM)
$7FFFFE: terminal output as ASCII
$7FFFFF: output ready status (bit 7: 1 = new output, write 00 after reading $7001FE)

Something happened last night:

Xk wrote a small Lua script to connect my monitor ASM hack to a socket so that the monitor can be used via snes9x-rr and a Telnet connection. We played around with it a bit.

For some reason, the built-in HELP command isn't very useful (DUMP and FILE aren't real commands anymore, as it turns out), but there are a couple of dozen unlisted commands that do various things like disassembly (shown above), memory dumping/editing, uploading/downloading code/data to and from system RAM and SPC RAM (and maybe VRAM, I'm not sure) via XMODEM, changing processor register contents, and some commands that I assume are for restarting execution at an arbitrary address, though I didn't get to test that one quite right (since snes9x-rr wasn't cooperating on my machine, I had to telnet to Xk's computer and operate the monitor without actually being able to see the SNES side at all

)

This monitor program exists intact in two other games ("Olivia no Mystery" / "Touge Densetsu") and was originally present in one game, possibly more ("Gunman's Proof") based on the presence of code that attempts to load the (now nonexistent) monitor into the correct memory location.

Neat eh?

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