Under the Microscope: Formula Karts Special Edition

The Manic Media Productions development studio is listed as having made three games on MobyGames:

• Manic Karts (1995, for PC)
• SuperKarts (1995, for PC)
• Formula Karts (1997, for PC, Saturn and PlayStation)

I guess they liked kart games? It doesn’t look like anybody on the programming team has made games since, so maybe they got it out of their systems.

A while back I found some interesting strings in the Saturn version’s game code, but I had trouble determining what their purpose was. I finally figured everything out after examining the PlayStation version, though! The results of my investigations are below…

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The Moon track

Navigate to Options > Name and put in the string WOODSTOCK:

The game will prompt you to put in your name again. After you leave the name screen, you can navigate to Race > Single Race to see a new track: The Moon.

As the name suggests, this is a course on the Moon. This is the only effect I was able to understand when I first looked at this game.

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Switch perspectives

Put in your name as CHIPPIE to enable perspective switching during races:

• Saturn: Hold X and press R.
• PlayStation: Hold Circle and press R1.

Your perspective will switch to one of the other racers! You can cycle through all of them by pressing the button combination repeatedly.

You also can change camera angles:

• Saturn: Hold X and press L.
• PlayStation: Hold Circle and press L1.

You can cycle through the different available angles, including the dynamic ones used in the auto demos.

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Unlimited turbo, super grip, and fuel

The special name FARTYPANTS (sigh) unlocks additional cheats. Put it in first, then any one (or all) of these names:

• BLADON: Unlimited “turbo.”
• OXFORD: Unlimited “super grip.”
• DUNSTEW: Unlimited fuel.

The gauges at the bottom of the screen will show “full” during races:

You won’t be able to use the turbo or super grip powerups in Arcade mode after this, because their effects are already active.

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Technical details

The list of special names stood out to me in the game data. They’re all together in memory:

0606d180 "OXFORD"
0606d18f "BLADON"
0606d19e "WOODSTOCK"
0606d1ad "DUNSTEW"
0606d1bc "CHIPPIE"
0606d1cb "FARTYPANTS"

The function at 06010af4 checks the name you put in against each of these and toggles a name-specific flag if it finds a match (this works in both directions; you can disable an effect by putting the same name in twice).

The WOODSTOCK name changes which track is the last one in the menu. The logic is pretty straightforward:

if (track_select_cursor == 8) and (woodstock_effect == 0):
    track_select_cursor = 0

The CHIPPIE effect’s memory address is read when you press the X button (on Saturn):

if (pressed_button & X_BUTTON_PATTERN != 0) and (chippie_effect != 0):
    if (pressed_button & L_BUTTON_PATTERN != 0):
        ...  # Do stuff
    if (pressed_button & R_BUTTON_PATTERN != 0):
        ...  # Do stuff

You can see that the FARTYPANTS code unlocks the other effects by examining the logic in the function at 06011914:

if fartypants_effect != 0:
    if oxford_effect != 0:
       ...  # Do stuff
    if bladon_effect != 0:
       ...  # Do stuff
    if dunstew_effect != 0:
       ...  # Do stuff

The addresses above are from the Saturn PAL version, but there’s substantially identical logic in the PlayStation version.

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Outro

See my my SHIRO! archive for many more articles on Saturn hacking. And check out my Rings of Saturn blog on Substack for even more retro game reverse engineering goodness.