SHIRO! community member privateye released a trio of patches over the past month to make quality-of-life improvements to the Saturn ports of arcade light-gun classics The House of the Dead, Virtua Cop, and Virtua Cop 2.
Each patch brings a bevy of improvements to their respective titles, some of which are optional or hardware sensitive. As privateye said on Bluesky — embedded above — these patches disable visual components of each game that are not required for play on contemporary LCD displays, namely the white flash used for hit detection when playing on CRTs. This visual queue is unnecessary on FPGA emulators like the MiSTer FPGA or SuperStation One or for LCD TV-compatible light-guns such as the GC01, GUN4IR, and Sinden to function.
These patches do a whole lot more! Full patch notes for each title are below. Please note that each patch targets a region-specific variation of these titles, those being the North American version of The House of the Dead and the Japanese releases of Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2.
The House of the Dead – Patch Link
- Changes the default blood color from green to red.
- Simplifies the Stage Select code to L+R+Start; perform this button combination on
ARCADEin the main menu or in Saturn mode’s Character Select menu. - Stops the
PRESS START BUTTONmessage from appearing during gameplay. - Unlocks Sophie Richards and Researcher as playable characters in Saturn mode.
- [Optional] Activates the hidden Japanese mode, essentially converting it to the Japanese release with the addition of three blood colors that are absent from it (blue/purple/red).
- [Optional] Activates the Stage Select menu automatically, thus eliminating the requirement for a controller to enter the code.
- [Optional] Disables the white flash triggered by light guns.
Virtua Cop – Patch Link
- Guns can be reloaded with just a single button press on controller or mouse, as opposed to two presses normally.
- Stops the
PRESS START,RANKING MODE, andGAME OVERmessages from appearing during gameplay. - Unlocks Ranking Mode: attempt to complete the game on a single credit!
- Unlocks special machine gun (set
GUN SELECTtoON, pause the game, and reload six times) - Unlocks
CONTINUE->FREE PLAYsetting which grants unlimited credits. - Unlocks six difficulty levels (Easiest / Very Easy / Medium Easy / Medium Hard / Very Hard / Hardest)
- Unlocks Option Plus menu (language can be changed from Japanese to English here)
- [OPTIONAL] Disables the white flash triggered by light guns.
Virtua Cop 2 – Patch Link
- Stops the
PRESS STARTmessage from appearing during gameplay. - Unlocks special machine gun (set
GUN SELECTtoON, pause the game, and reload six times) - Unlocks
CONTINUE->FREE PLAYsetting which grants unlimited credits. - Unlocks Option Plus menu (language can be changed from Japanese to English here)
- [OPTIONAL] Disables the white flash triggered by light guns.
All three of these Saturn titles have been covered by SHIRO! in the past, with Virtua Cop receiving the PandaMonium “Reviewing Every U.S. Saturn Game” multi-hour documentary treatment — here’s the full video and corresponding article.
While you are at it, check out what Peter Malek thinks of these light-gun classics in his #BestOfSaturn series: The House of the Dead, Virtua Cop, and Virtua Cop 2.
What are the odds of someone developing a patch for House of the Dead that takes advantage of the 4Mb RAM cart to eliminate mid-level loading?
Odds are very low because a) significant reverse engineering would be required as all of the game data (except the main executable and redbook audio) is packed into a single 66.4MB file that is 16.6x larger than the 4MB expansion cart, and b) mid-level load times are drastically reduced simply by playing the game on Saroo, no hacking required.