Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Actua Golf & Virtual Golf
Golf games — kind of a snooze, right? I always thought so, and maybe I still do… But the Saturn has a handful of them, and I wondered if any…
Bo Bayles’ Hacks & Cheats
Saturn game hacker & reverse engineer extraordinaire, Bo Bayles, digs up long lost treasures that lay hidden away within the code of nearly every Saturn game! You can read more about his journey & findings in detail on his blog, RINGS OF SATURN at https://32bits.substack.com/.
Here we are honored to feature Bo’s ‘UNDER THE MICROSOPE’ series, where you can join him on his quest to uncovering every last Sega Saturn game secret in existence!
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Segagaga
2025 is the year in which Segagaga, Sega’s video game company simulation RPG on the Dreamcast, takes place. It’s 2025 now, so I decided to check out what’s hiding on…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Grandia Digital Museum, Samurai Spirits Bushido Retsuden & Marica: The Real World
In a previous edition I wrote up how to access debug menus in a few Saturn RPGs. Let’s do it again! Here are three more games with hidden debug features:…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Sakura Wars and Sakura Wars 2 (Dreamcast)
In a previous edition I uncovered debug mode cheat codes for Sakura Wars and Sakura Wars 2 on Saturn. Both games were reissued for the Dreamcast with various upgrades. Do…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Metropolis Street Racer (Dreamcast)
In this edition: The Dream On: Volume 7 demo disc has a “rolling demo” of Metropolis Street Racer that’s not normally playable. I made a patch that lets you take…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Ejihon Detective Agency
In this edition: Making Ejihon Detective Agency playable as a standalone Saturn game The Game-Ware “digital magazine” discs The obscure Super Prologue 21 sampler disc Get the standalone Ejihon patch…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Tokyo Highway Battle: Drift King ’97
American and European Saturn owners didn’t get to play Genki’s Tokyo Highway Battle — it only came out for the PlayStation in those regions. A Saturn version was published in…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Burning Rangers (1997-12-20 build)
In this edition: A magazine demo disc has a non-playable demo of Burning Rangers …which is based on prerelease build of the entire game …that we can make playable This…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Iron Man / X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal
In this edition: New cheat codes for Iron Man / X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal. There’s a cheat menu that gives you invincibility, unlimited weapons, the ability to skip levels,…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Skeleton Warriors
After looking at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 in an previous edition of Rings of Saturn, I decided to check out Neversoft’s other titles. I chose Skeleton Warriors, the skeleton-themed…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Elevator Action Returns
In Taito’s Elevator Action arcade games, you play as special agents trying to prevent terrorists from blowing up stuff. In order to do that, you have to shoot a lot…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Saturn Patch: Sonic Into Dreams Remix
It’s Christmas NiGHTS season once again! In this edition, I’m describing a new patch / hack that I’ve made that alters the Sonic Into Dreams present for Christmas NiGHTS Into…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: SoulCalibur
In this edition: The SoulCalibur Tokubetsu Taikenban demo disc restricts you to playing two characters in one mode, but I’ve made a patch to remove these limitations. The disc is…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Off-World Interceptor Extreme
In this edition: I found some cheat codes for Off-World Interceptor Extreme that have stayed hidden for 29 years. The codes also work on the the original 3DO version, Off-World…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Ecco the Dolphin — Defender of the Future
In this edition: Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future has some previously unrecognized cheat features that activate based on what you name your save file. Using Ghidra and Python,…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: The House of the Dead
In this edition: The House of the Dead Taikenban normally lets you play part of the first chapter. But we can patch the demo to let us play more of…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Cheat Code Roundup
Approximately 20% of my mental capacity was dedicated to finding, using, and thinking about cheat codes when I was a kid. I first submitted a code to SegaSages.com when I…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Riglordsaga 2, Shiroki Majo, Magic Knight Rayearth
In this edition I’ve got debug menu hacks for three Saturn RPGs: Riglordsaga 2 Shiroki Majo: Mouhitotsu no Eiyuu Densetsu Magic Knight Rayearth These menus let you alter game parameters…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Alien Trilogy & Ghen War
In this edition, I find some long-unknown passwords for Alien Trilogy, and one of them is surprisingly rude. Here’s the comprehensive list of passwords with new ones highlighted: I also…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Blazing Heroes
In this edition: Blazing Heroes (a.k.a. Mystaria, a.k.a. Riglord Saga) has a hidden set of debug and cheat menus. They allow you to be invincible, warp to anywhere in the…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Hardcore 4×4
In this edition I’ve got some new cheat codes for Hardcore 4×4, the off-road truck racing game: One code enables debug mode with a bunch of different functions. Some others…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Doom, Revolution X, Earthworm Jim 2
In this edition I’ve got details about some new cheat codes for Saturn games: Doom: technical information about the transparent walls code. Revolution X: a new cheat options screen. Earthworm…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Anarchy in the Nippon
In this edition: There are a couple of demos of Goiken Muyou: Anarchy in the Nippon, the goofy 3D fighting game designed by Virtua Fighter enthusiasts. The demos have superficial…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Golden Axe: The Duel
In this edition: I’ve made a patch to enable a hidden debug menu in Golden Axe: The Duel. It lets you play as the final boss, display hit boxes, adjust…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Gun Frontier
Xing Entertainment did a series of ports of old arcade titles for the Saturn and PlayStation under the Arcade Gears banner. One of the titles was Gun Frontier, a Taito…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Savaki
In this edition: Savaki, the mixed martial arts fighting game, has some previously undocumented button codes to unlock extra characters and debug features. In addition, there’s a a more-or-less full…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Expansion Hack: Metal Black
The Saturn version of Metal Black is a port of the 1991 Taito arcade game. In its story, Earth is suffering under an uneasy truce with a hostile alien force….
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Under the Microscope: Dungeon Master Nexus
Dungeon Master Nexus was a Japanese Saturn exclusive, but through the magic of fan translation patches, you can play it in English. This patch sparked some renewed interest in the…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Extending The Demo: Dark Savior
The ominous parallels I started looking at Dark Savior in response to a reader question: Is there a sixth parallel? In case you don’t know, Dark Savior is a Saturn RPG with an unusual…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
NiGHTS Grounded for 28th Anniversary…
On July 3, 2024, Saturn game hacker & reverse engineer, Bo Bayles, released a special game patch in celebration of the 28th Anniversary of NiGHTS into Dreams… In this reimaged…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Burning Rangers Co-Op Mode Reignited
On June 3, 2024, Saturn game hacker extraordinaire, Bo Bayles, announced the latest in his series of game patches that seek to restore hidden/unused assets & functionality to Saturn games….
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Cheat Codes, Debugger Found in Fighters Megamix — Plus Evidence of Street Fighter Characters
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…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Unused Farm Stage Found in Fighting Vipers
It seems Fighting Vipers held at least one more secret. Three days after publishing a patch to enable a previously unknown Pai-like costume for Honey and Backup Debugger screen, Saturn…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
New Costume, Debug Screen Discovered in Fighting Vipers
The Japanese version of Sega Saturn fighting game Fighting Vipers famously has more unlockables than the U.S. and even PAL versions. More unlockable characters, unlockable portraits — or different unlockable…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Four-Player Mode Found Hidden in High Velocity: Mountain Racing Challenge
High Velocity: Mountain Racing Challenge, an early Saturn exclusive that shipped with a two-player mode, could have let even more people in on the fun if developer Cave enabled a…