Hidden things in PCE/Turbo games -- post your findings here!

[SuperPlay]

Thanks for the post, very interesting information :-)

[esteban]

Necro: yes, the final game has a shooter, a Head-On/Rally-X clone, an Arkanoid clone, and a quiz game as mini-games.  They're accessible from the regular debug menu in Elfinee.

Aha, I knew it.  That Gunhed ROM has text from Tombs & Treasures (Asteka II on the Famicom), since both were developed by Compile.

That Dracula X mini-stage: isn't it just the "hidden" polygonal stage that you can play when you use a System 2.0 card with Drac X?

Can you post screenshots of the shooter? Plus, any relevant info on the mini-game (it's objective, it's "depth", is it any fun? Challenging? Etc.)

THANK YOU!

 

[Black Tiger]

Chris also hacked out an otherwise inaccessible debug mode for Daimakaimura.

[ccovell]

Yes, a couple other cheat/debug things that need to be hacked back in to use:

http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1823 Daimakaimura
http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1822 Battle Ace
http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1849 PC Genjin

And semi-hidden cheat codes:
http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1825 Gran Zort
http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1821 Gomola Speed & Atomic Robo-Kid
http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1800 Legion
http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1789 Download II

But I don't want this page just to be a cheat repository.  I'd rather list hidden things that the developers didn't want us to find.  :-)

[Black Tiger]

What about those hidden images like the one of a truck?

[johnnykonami]

edit.com

Oh man, I had entirely forgotten about this program.  Been so long since the DOS days.

One of the Far East of Eden games has parts of the source code in it, and it looked like the programmer was having a bad day (lots of use of the F word in there).

I would love to see this.  Been planning another playthrough of the series for a while now.

[Bonknuts]

ccovell: awesome work on that daimakaimura hack!

Aha, I knew it.  That Gunhed ROM has text from Tombs & Treasures (Asteka II on the Famicom), since both were developed by Compile."

I guess it was common for japanese developers to handle the translation of US games, BITD?

That Dracula X mini-stage: isn't it just the "hidden" polygonal stage that you can play when you use a System 2.0 card with Drac X?

 No, not the system card warning stage. I posted about it some time back, here on the forums. I'll see if I can find it again.

 Sylphia has an alternate sprite set for the main char that was in the data track. I hacked it and played the game with it, but it didn't look a whole lot different than the original.

I would love to see this.  Been planning another playthrough of the series for a while now.

It's easy to see with a hex editor. Just open the data track with it (IIRC, it's just standard ascii C code and comments). It's either the first game or the second game (there are two versions of the second game- don't know if it's in both).

What about those hidden images like the one of a truck?

A lot of early CD games have that. Appears to be some sort of example pack/source/thingy.

[NightWolve]

edit.com

Oh man, I had entirely forgotten about this program.  Been so long since the DOS days.

DOS4EVER, brother!


Alright, so I found the thread that I was thinking of. At least, I think this is the one, I could swear it was either Bonknuts or Chris that had posted that large lizard (thought snake/serpent) somewhere, but it's from Aaron:

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=8139.msg137903#msg137903


Look at the great presentation that went into it too, complete with a title image to promote it and with the intent to be a "part 1."

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=8139.msg137903#msg137903


Alas, the thread didn't take off, none of yous contributed, unlike Chris' new thread! Still, I give Aaron A+ for presentation versus this thread.


http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/data/

Disgruntled Designer. Heh. That "NO!" it tells me when I click there hurts my feelings...

[ccovell]

Yes, but I did make a PCE ROM collecting some of these pics:


http://www.chrismcovell.com/data/HiddenPics.zip

(The Space Fantasy Zone pics are probably not hidden anymore; I just couldn't get to the ending cinema at the time.)

[NightWolve]

Yes, but I did make a PCE ROM collecting some of these pics:
http://www.chrismcovell.com/data/HiddenPics.zip

Well, A+ to you for your programming prowess, that's for sure. Aaron couldn't do that! Heh-heh. So I just took a look at that ROM, compiled 6 of the images below.



Now on one hand, your programming prowess is, yeah, impressive, on the other, it's hard to process that you could will/motivate yourself to produce such a limited-purpose ROM just for a mere presentation of these hidden images tied to a PCE/TG-16 emulator, something that otherwise could've been done as a web page, etc. But yeah, I get it partly, the searching for ideas for demos and then wanting to challenge yourself at managing to do it, even if it's kind of pointless or won't be used much, if ever.

I've wondered, how is it that fan translating was something that never interested you before ?

[ccovell]

Um, I've translated games (Jerry Boy, Head Buster), documents (Tsushin Booster instructions & BASIC manual), interviews (Jerry Boy, Solstice II), comics, magazine articles (Rockman 3), and books (Making of Famicom Games, Making of DQVI), and probably others I've forgotten about...

I'll translate something if I really like its source game/material, and if there's no English information about it around the 'net.

[NightWolve]

Ah, I see, those 2 little games with the first one having an official US version, but its story was apparently excised as you say (whatever it had) so you fan translated the original, and the other one is for Sega Game Gear. I suspect they didn't get much notice (it's news to me).

Ever thought about a big CD RPG project that would get noticed, like say Cosmic Fantasy 3-4 ? To work with Bonknuts and others on something like that, etc. ?

[ccovell]

Sorry, but I just don't like turn-based RPGs.  (And they tend to have massive text anyway, so you need to love the story & characters to translate one of them.)