Cheat codes, a debug screen and evidence of cut characters in Fighters Megamix have been revealed after a hacker unearthed them Thursday.
Just a week after finding secrets in Fighting Vipers, Bo Bayles checked out Vipers’ Saturn-exclusive pseudo-sequel, Fighters Megamix, and posted about it on social media as well as his blog.
Megamix famously has a bevy of unlockables, some of which are accessible from an extra options screen. Bayles found a hidden cheat code to unlock the screen — from the main options screen, use the player two controller to press: Up, Up, X, X, Down, Down, Z, Z, Left, Left, X, X, Right, Right, Z, Z.
He found another code that unlocks a previously unknown Backup Debug screen — on the Extra Options screen, use player two’s controller to press Up, Up, X, X, X, Down, Down, Z, Z, Z, Left, Left, X, X, X, Right, Right, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z.
Bayles found a similar Backup Debug screen in Fighting Vipers last week.
The code also unlocks a Backup Utility, which lets players copy and delete their save files — even to a floppy disk, for those with the Saturn disk drive.
The backup debugger can be fiddled with to unlock characters in Megamix that normally have to be unlocked by playing its several single-player courses, making it particularly handy for anyone whose save file got deleted by a dead battery. Bayles details the process on his blog:
Go to the Backup Debug screen.
Go down to Load and press A.
Go down to SET0 and press A 3 times to change it to SET3.
Go down to FLG0 and press A to change it to FLG1.
Go up to SAVE and press A.
The character select screen will now show everybody.
This unlocks everything except Mr. Meat and the Palm Tree, which have to be unlocked by turning on the game 30 times and playing for 84 hours, respectively, or via an Action Replay code.
But perhaps the most intriguing find that Bayles published was evidence of cut characters: Aoi from Virtua Fighter 3 as well as Ken and Ryu from Street Fighter.
Their names appear on the list of characters for the game’s Bookkeep screen, although they’re normally not visible. Bayles adjusted the code that begins the list with Grace to instead begin two spots earlier — where Ken and Ryu’s names can be found. He also could change the code to begin the list one spot later to reveal Aoi’s name hiding at the end. There aren’t enough spots on the screen to show each character’s name at once.
Aoi’s name also appears in the same game code table as the selectors for which stage is used for Survival mode, but it cuts off before it gets to her. He can display her name on the extra options screen using a hack:
The game crashes if you try to select her, though.
Many of Aoi’s moves were used for an unlockable character in Fighters Megamix, Janet, who’s from Virtua Cop 2, so it’s not a huge surprise to see her here. But Street Fighter isn’t a Sega franchise, it belongs to Capcom. Did a deal fall through that would have included them in Megamix, or did developer AM2 simply toy with including them as a joke before ultimately cutting them?
Either way, Bayles said he couldn’t find any art assets for the characters on the Megamix disc. It’s still a fascinating find for a game that already is loaded with iconic characters.
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