Jul -- The Cutting Room Floor: Panzer Dragoon Saga Prototype (9/16/97) Title Debug Menus Enabled

koolaidman
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Posted on 07-07-15 07:11:35 PM (last edited by koolaidman at 07-08-15 01:56:49 AM)

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Download here!

About 7 years a go, drx released a few prototypes for Panzer Dragoon Saga. The earliest one (9/16/97) is the most interesting of the bunch. While it does have a debugger activated by default on the second controller while in game, the prototype only has that much enabled which left a lot of the game unexplored. It was reported that the game had a sound test but as far as I know no one has figured out how to access it until now. It turns out that the game has two sets of title screen selections, one for retail release and one for development (the former is activated by default in this prototype). The two arrays contain the string for the entry on the title screen, some padding data (although it might be data relating to where it's printed on the screen?), and a loading subroutine for that option. See the code below:

ROM:0603E4D0 title_select_list:.data.l h'1FFFB       ; DATA XREF: ROM:loc_6023174o

ROM:0603E4D0                                         ; ROM:off_60231E0o

ROM:0603E4D4                 .data.l aNewGame        ; "NEW GAME"

ROM:0603E4D8                 .data.l loc_60235D6

ROM:0603E4DC                 .data.l h'1FFFC

ROM:0603E4E0                 .data.l aContinue       ; "CONTINUE"

ROM:0603E4E4                 .data.l loc_60235E0

ROM:0603E4E8 title_select_list_debug:.data.l h'1FFF8 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0602316Co

ROM:0603E4E8                                         ; ROM:off_60231DCo

ROM:0603E4EC                 .data.l aNewGame        ; "NEW GAME"

ROM:0603E4F0                 .data.l loc_60235D6

ROM:0603E4F4                 .data.l h'1FFF9

ROM:0603E4F8                 .data.l aContinue       ; "CONTINUE"

ROM:0603E4FC                 .data.l loc_60235E0

ROM:0603E500                 .data.l h'1FFFA

ROM:0603E504                 .data.l aTown           ; "TOWN"

ROM:0603E508                 .data.l loc_60235EA

ROM:0603E50C                 .data.l h'1FFFB

ROM:0603E510                 .data.l aField          ; "FIELD"

ROM:0603E514                 .data.l loc_60235F2

ROM:0603E518                 .data.l h'1FFFC

ROM:0603E51C                 .data.l aBattle         ; "BATTLE"

ROM:0603E520                 .data.l loc_60235FA

ROM:0603E524                 .data.l h'1FFFD

ROM:0603E528                 .data.l aSound          ; "SOUND"

ROM:0603E52C                 .data.l loc_6023602

ROM:0603E530                 .data.l h'1FFFE

ROM:0603E534                 .data.l aMovie          ; "MOVIE"

ROM:0603E538                 .data.l loc_602361C

In 1ST_READ.PRG, the game will do the following to determine which list to load:

ROM:06023160 loc_6023160:                            ; CODE XREF: ROM:06023154j

ROM:06023160                 mov.w   #h'F6, r4       ; Move Immediate Word Data

ROM:06023162                 mov.l   #sub_601DC88, r3 ; Move Immediate Long Data

ROM:06023164                 jsr     @r3 ; sub_601DC88 ; Jump to Subroutine

ROM:06023166                 nop                     ; No Operation

ROM:06023168                 tst     r0, r0          ; Test Logical

ROM:0602316A                 bt      loc_6023174     ; Branch if True

ROM:0602316C                 mov.l   #title_select_list_debug, r3 ; Move Immediate Long Data

ROM:0602316E                 mov.l   r3, @(8,r14)    ; Move Structure Long Data

ROM:06023170                 bra     loc_602317A     ; Branch

ROM:06023172                 mov     #7, r0          ; Move Immediate Byte Data

ROM:06023174 ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ROM:06023174

ROM:06023174 loc_6023174:                            ; CODE XREF: ROM:0602316Aj

ROM:06023174                 mov.l   #title_select_list, r2 ; Move Immediate Long Data

ROM:06023176                 mov     #2, r0          ; Move Immediate Byte Data

ROM:06023178                 mov.l   r2, @(8,r14)    ; Move Structure Long Data

To fix this issue, I simply changed the branch if true to a branch if false and it worked just fine. I know I could've released a patch/code for this instead of just uploading the game again, but I wasn't sure if the release was still floating around or not so I figured I should put it up again just in case. I'm sure that this still exists in all release of Saga, so I could potentially come up with a patch/code for all the other releases as well.

Some pictures of the menus:

Enjoy!

PS: Select Town -> EVENT059 and watch the cutscene. All the voices are using the motion capture actor scratch voices. Pretty neat.

EDIT: I noticed SSF doesn't want to load the ISO for me. Here's a savestate instead (tested with the latest test version).

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Query execution time:	0.075955 seconds
Script execution time:	0.007123 seconds
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