Under the Microscope: Mighty Hits

Mighty Hits is a shooting gallery game made for light guns. It was developed and published by the Japanese company Altron for Saturn and PlayStation in 1996. An enhanced Special edition was published for PlayStation in 1999. None of the versions were released in the United States, but translated versions came out in PAL regions for both Saturn and PlayStation.

I decided to check the various versions of this game for unreported cheat effects, and was pleased to find some. See below for details on:

• A stage select code for the Saturn versions.
• The extra difficulty mode cheat for the PAL Saturn version.

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Stage select

The PlayStation version of Mighty Hits has a stage select cheat code listed here:

Stage select: Open the Option screen and enter the following sequence:

Square, X, X, Square, Square, Square, X, X, X, X

Is there an equivalent one for the Saturn version? Yes! Enter this sequence at the Press Start Button screen:

Left, Up, Right, Left, Right

When you go to the Option screen, you’ll have a new Select item. Changing the Stage Select value will affect where you begin playing in 1 Player mode.

The interface is different from the PlayStation version’s, shown here:

Technical details: The function at 0600d1c8 (PAL version) handles input on the title screen. It’s checking the buttons you press against the sequence at 0604033c:

0604033c 4000  # Left
0604033e 1000  # Up
06040340 8000  # Right
06040342 4000  # Left
06040344 8000  # Right
06040346 0000  # End

The counter stored at 06044950 increments when you get a button right (and resets to 0 if you get one wrong). The value at 060467a1 changes from ff to 00 when you’ve put in the whole sequence. This enables stage select on the Option screen.

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Unlock the extra difficulty mode

The Japanese Saturn version lets you access an extra difficulty level from the Course Select screen. You have to shoot the U, R, and L letters to make it show up.

The PAL version has different letters, however. Since it says Level Select instead of Course Select, there’s no U or R to shoot:

If you instead shoot the V and second E in the LEVEL and then the space in between the L and the second E in SELECT, you’ll get the same effect. I’ve marked them here:

If you hit the right spots, the new Master difficulty appears:

Technical details: The function at 0600ebcc (PAL version) is tracking which areas of the screen you’ve shot. Each section is associated with a bit pattern, and when you shoot that section, its value gets logically OR-ed with the values you’ve already shot. If you get the bit pattern 010c, the extra difficulty level activates.

The V in the first word gives you 0004, the second E in the first word gives you 0008, and the space in between L and the second E in the last word gives you 0100.

0x0004 | 0x0008 | 0x0100 = 0x010c

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Outro

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back here with another Saturn offering next week. In the meantime, check out my Substack blog for:

• Some more new codes for Mighty Hits (PlayStation).
• A breakdown of the cheat code obfuscation system in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (PlayStation 2).
• An exploration of hidden elements in Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness for (Dreamcast and PlayStation).