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
I know what you’re thinking: “Bo, the cheat codes for Battle Arena Toshinden Remix have already been documented! We’re already aware of how to unlock the boss characters and enable…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
The Flash Sega Saturn Vol. 18 demo disc includes a preview of the Saturn port of Last Bronx, Sega AM3’s 1996 3D arcade fighting game. The preview is an “auto…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: Impact Racing has a hidden debug mode that’s really cool. You can tweak car settings, track parameters, and more. It’s already been documented for the PlayStation version…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Sound Qube is a puzzle game from Media Entertainment and Human Entertainment. There’s a very thorough description of the gameplay at Sega Retro, but in a nutshell: You’re presented with…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition I’ve got a couple of new cheat codes for some games from Technosoft: Hyper Duel, the horizontal shoot-em-up that was released for Saturn in late 1996. Blast…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Everyone knows that Sonic R is a racing game. But what this article presupposes is… maybe it doesn’t have to be? I’ve made a patch, the R&R mod, that changes…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition I’m examining the two Lode Runner games for Saturn: The Legend Returns and Extra. Although the series was originally developed in the West, it was particularly successful…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Ultraman: Legendary Giant of Light is a fighting game for Saturn. It’s one of five Ultraman titles for Saturn (two games and three media discs), and one of two Saturn…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: Yuna Remix has a sound/movie/image test mode that can be accessed with a special controller from Hudson. The game also has another hidden menu with some cool…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
The original Dragon Force was very well-received in the West. It sold a bunch of copies and was praised by critics. But the sequel, published in 1998 in Japan, wasn’t…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
My favorite Japanese cheat site has a special password listed for the PlayStation version of Kyuutenkai, the Technosoft pinball game. Translated, it says: Enter KYUTENKA4S on the password screen. You’ll…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: Andretti Racing on Saturn has some well-known Easter eggs that involve putting in special player names. I found eight more! These show pictures of the development staff,…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Steam-Heart’s is a game for Saturn that combines passable shoot-em-up gameplay with NSFW anime scenes. The visuals are less explicit in the Saturn version than the PC-98 original, but some…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition, I’m examining Planet Joker, the 1997 shooting game for Saturn. This game doesn’t have a whole lot of fans because (a) it was never released outside of…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Chaos Control is an on-rails shooting game from Infogrames. It was initially released in 1995 for Mac, PC, Philips CD-i, PlayStation, and Saturn. A second “remixed” version was released for…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition I’m examining Atlantis: The Lost Tales, the Myst-like adventure/puzzle game. The original DOS version was a hit in Europe. But the console port was not terribly well…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Blast Chamber is a 1996 game from Attention To Detail, a UK studio that was active from 1990 through 2002. It was released on both PlayStation and Saturn. Some cheat…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Here’s an excerpt from the August 1997 issue of Ultra Game Players: Finally, THQ, who was originally going to publish several PlayStation conversions of Psygnosis’ games, has cancelled those efforts…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Electronic Arts famously refused to release games for Sega’s Dreamcast, but people often forget that the company put out dozens of Saturn games. One of those Saturn games was Soviet…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
What do Herc’s Adventures, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Wangan Trial Love have in common, besides being Saturn games? All three games have unreported “staff roll” Easter eggs —…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
There are a bunch of games in the K-1 Fighting series. One of them was published for Saturn, Fighting Illusion Shou. It’s a 3D fighting game in which you play…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: There’s a demo of Virtua Fighter Kids that lets you play a limited subset of the game. I patched out the limits. The demo is based on…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
GamePro said this of Tennis Arena: Hands down, Tennis Arena clinches the match as the single best tennis game for the PlayStation, delivering addictive, fast-paced gameplay. Given the pathetic competition…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: Cotton Boomerang has a well-known cheat code that grants you extra options. I found that adding a couple of buttons to it unlocks more bonus items. Terra…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Eidos planned to publish Chill, a snowboarding / cryptid hunting game, for both PlayStation and Saturn in 1998. But the Saturn version never materialized, leaving Swagman as Eidos’s final Saturn…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
The manual for Hyper 3-D Pinball doesn’t hold back: it declares pinball to be the ultimate form of gaming: So you think you’re a hardened gamer? Think again. All those…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Sega developed and published games for several anime series in the ’90s. In this edition I’m looking at two of them that have heretofore-unreported cheat codes: Neon Genesis Evangelion: 2nd…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
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…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: I break the password encoding scheme for The Crow: City of Angels while looking for cheat codes. I don’t find any, but I do find an exploitable…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition we’re looking at Thunder Force V Sample ROM, a demo disc for Thunder Force V. It normally lets you play a single stage, but there’s data for…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Over at the Sonic Retro forums, user Black Squirrel pointed out that the PlayStation version of Casper has some cheat codes listed on sites like GameFAQs. He was able to…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
This is the introduction to Sky Target, the 3D flight combat game from Sega: A super jet fighter plane, nicknamed “White Sword,” was developed by the U.S. Army in strict…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Congo the Movie: The Lost City of Zinj is a Doom-like FPS that’s set in the world of the 1995 film Congo. It doesn’t use the movie characters or scenes,…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In a previous edition I looked at Shining the Holy Ark for Saturn. I found an unusual method for enabling that game’s debug menu in that game, so I naturally…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Here is how GamePro’s review summed up Criticom: Criticom is the worst fighting game of the year. A 1996 Usenet user had this to say: i had the playstation version…