Release of a prototype for Space Channel 5 Dreamcast with an impressive Nindows Debug Menu. The prototype contains unused voices of Michael Jackson. Who will lead Ulala to victory?
Soul Hackers: Extra Dungeon and Its Nice, Stable Debug Mode
Hi! It’s been a while! Again! 久しぶり, as we say in my other tongue. Tax season has come and gone here in the Pepsiman household and now work season is finally in full swing again, hence the quiet again. But! I wanted to throw up some sort of update to whet your appetites and I think I have just the thing.
Remember that Soul Hackers: Extra Dungeon disc I dumped for you all last year? I’ve poking around at its innards here and there in my down time and I figured out a while back that, it’s also got a really extensive debug mode, just like the stuff I documented for vanilla Soul Hackers on the Saturn here! And what’s more, as far as I can tell, nobody on the Japanese Internet ever unearthed this debug mode for the Extra Disc dungeon disc, which is really exciting for me in a nerdy way, even if it probably just boils down to its sheer rarity and lack of publicly available dumps aside from mine.
Anyway, the debug mode stuff! It looks and works 99 percent like the one for the main game, the details of which you can find here if you’re new to Soul Hackers’ debug features, so this isn’t going to be nearly as long of a post. There are a few interesting differences that I’ll get to in a little bit, but first, let’s quickly go over how to access the thing.
Reminder
To access the Saturn Extra Dungeon content, you’ll need a save file from the main game, which it uses to import your party and stats. For more details on the requirements your save needs to meet, visit this page where I uploaded the dump of my disc, which also includes a hacked save file that’ll work in case you’re understandably not inclined to put in the work.
Pro Action Replay/Art Money Codes
Post-Load Screen Debug Menu:
Pro Action Replay: 30223802 0001
Art Money: 00223802 0001
In-Game Debug Functions:
Pro Action Replay: 30223003 0001
Art Money: 00223003 0001
The instructions for loading these codes in emulation using Art Money are the same as for the main game debug codes, so consult that previous post linked above for more information on how to do that if you aren’t familiar with the procedure for doing so. As with last time, while I don’t have access to real hardware to test the Pro Action Replay cheats, they should work, as I did try them in Yabuse, an emulator that does feature native support for them and they worked like a charm, so hopefully they should play nice on a real Saturn. There are a few things to note about how these cheats work in practice, however.
First, because of the way Extra Dungeon’s content is structured specifically (ie: no save points from start to finish), you can’t really use both cheats at the same time. So if you want to access the debug menu, you’ll have to turn that cheat on, but keep the in-game debug function cheat off, and vice versa. You can turn on the in-game debug functionality flag within the debug menu like usual and it is technically possible to re-access the Extra Dungeon content after entering the menu, but it’s a huge logistical pain involving using the map warp feature and isn’t worth the effort. Just activate the menu, make a save state for it, then do the same for the in-game debug functions and then you can go back and forth between them without much trouble.
The way these cheats are activated in the game once you’ve input them also surprisingly vary depending on the method that you use. If you use Pro Action Replay, whether in emulation (not recommended with Yabuse, as its support of Soul Hackers in general is quite spotty) or hypothetically on real hardware, once you’ve input them, you’re set and don’t need to worry about anything else. However, if you’re using Art Money, you must wait until after you’ve loaded your save file before freezing the value to activate your desired cheat. For whatever reason, Extra Dungeon has a habit of trying to wipe the RAM values for both cheats after a save is loaded in emulation and will successfully override even a value that should stay frozen. Therefore, wait until you get to this screen below that immediately after loading your save to activate either cheat in emulation.
Once you’re here, you should be good to go!
Whichever way you decide to go for loading your cheats, do know that if you want to access the debug menu specifically, you’ll need to get past this introductory screen first. Unlike the vanilla Saturn version, this debug menu isn’t triggered with button codes on the file selection screen. Once you get past that screen, you’ll load right into the debug menu like usual and be able to go about your business!
So What’s Actually Different About This Version of the Debug Features?
Honestly, not a whole lot. The features for both the menu and in-game debug functionality are more or less identical, making these codes primarily useful for exploring Extra Dungeon content specifically. Having said that, there are a few interesting wrinkles that I’ve uncovered in my own research that I’ll briefly outline below.
Overall, the debug menu specifically is more stable. Indeed, funnily enough, despite being distributed a few months after the main game, the debug menu in Extra Dungeon actually works better than the vanilla game version’s in a few key areas. First and foremost, the text at the bottom that indicates whether you have the in-game debug mode turned on or off actually works properly. It defaults to the text saying “off” rather than “on” and smoothly goes back and forth between the two states properly when pressing the Start Button. Aside from the crash that still happens when trying to access the “Movie Ev” option, this is clearly how this menu is intended to actually work, rather than the slightly wonky incarnation on display in the vanilla game.
On a similar note, the “Install” option in Extra Dungeon’s debug menu actually has all of the unlockable programs you can activate in game for you to trigger as you like, rather than being completely barren in the original game’s debug menu. Handy!
Content within the Event menu is largely the same, barring some minor alterations here and there to accommodate the new content that’s unique to the Extra Dungeon disc, such as Kyouji’s art being available for viewing.
Interestingly enough, a seemingly decent amount of the original game’s content still seems to be accessible and playable on the disc. If you go to the “2D Map” option in the debug menu, you’ll be taken back out in the main game, which you can then play as normal. Your starting area seems to depend on the save file that you load into Extra Dungeon from what I’ve tested. Seeing as Extra Dungeon is just one disc, though, I imagine the game will probably go haywire if you try to access the disc transition and/or possibly anything that requires the anime FMV files to be loaded. That being said, I haven’t tested this extensively myself and can confirm that you can at least warp to late-game areas with the scripting still seemingly intact, so it might not be quite so bad, all things considered.
Incidentally, if you do choose to turn on the in-game debug flag through the debug menu before sneaking back into the main game this way, the full debug functionality that you get in the overworld and other parts of the main game is at your disposal.
That should be the long and short of this debug stuff in Extra Dungeon, at least insofar as I’ve been able to determine. While in practice a lot of it covers the same ground as the debug features in the main game, it still pleases me greatly to have found a way to bring it up in this relatively obscure disc and document it for posterity. Hopefully it’ll be of use to at least some of you who like to dumpster dive into the more unique parts of Atlus history like this.
Enjoy!
-Pepsi
PS: Feel free to repost this information to sites such as tcrf.net, but please do me a favor and credit this blog, The Atlus Atlas, if you choose to do so. Doing all this research took a lot of time and I’d appreciate the recognition, especially given how I’m the one to have broken the news about all this, to my knowledge. Thanks!
I did a small test and spawned 500 of each grumpus. And I understood one thing - all other grumpuses in large quantities crash the game, BUT gramble for some reason does not cause the game to crash
