Saturn enthusiast Shadowmask has just published a new translation patch for Mobile Suit Gundam, the 1995 Saturn game from CRI and Bandai. Check it out!
Shadowmask’s work prompted me to check the game for hidden goodies, and I found one: a very useful cheat menu. The code for it seems to have remained undiscovered for almost 30 years, and I’m not surprised — it’s very difficult to enter.
It’s not difficult to enter Shadowmask’s version, however: I provided a patch that makes it easily accessible from the title screen — just press X to bring it up.
In addition to the cheat menu code, the game also has movie select and stage select codes. These have been on Japanese language cheat sites for ages, but aren’t well attested on English sites.
Below are details about how all of these codes work.
The cheat menu code
In the unpatched game, the cheat menu code is entered at the title screen as follows:
C, R, X,
A, Left, Right,
C, R, X,
A, Left, Right,
C, R, X,
A, Left, Right
You’ve gotta go fast while putting it in. Here’s what you’ll see if you’re successful:
The Stage No. and Area No. items are very useful; they change your starting location. Gundam Muteki is an invincibility mode, which is also useful.
Clear Cnt sets the number of “clears,” i.e. successful completions of the game. But there’s a catch — see below.
Skip Movie does what the name suggests. Skip Sien Sobi skips the Operation Map screens:
The other codes
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make the Clear Cnt value on the cheat menu persist — you can set it, but if you do a soft reset it will be cleared. If you do clear the game at least once, you can enter the movie select code:
A, X, B, Z, C
And if you clear it 8 times, you can get a lesser stage select menu with this code:
A, Y, C, B
Technical details
These codes are handled by the function at 060020ae. Here’s some simplified pseudocode:
The button code sequences are stored at 06003f58. Each button is represented by a 4 byte pattern:
Knowing that, you can read out the codes. The cheat menu code is:
Interestingly, there’s an unused code sequence in the same region of the disc image:
There’s a function that listens for it, but it’s not hooked up at all. So there are no clues as to what effect it was supposed to have.
Outro
Feel free to use this information and these screenshots on your favorite reference website. For previous coverage of previously undocumented cheat codes, see my archive.
This post is syndicated from Rings of Saturn, Bo’s reverse engineering blog.
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