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
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…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Radiant Silvergun is a well-regarded shoot-em-up from Treasure, whose game Silhouette Mirage was previously covered on Rings of Saturn. I looked into this game’s code a while back, but didn’t…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Omakase! Savers is an adventure game for the Saturn that was published by Sega in 1996. It tells the story of three girls who stumble upon an ancient secret that…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Shining the Holy Ark, the 1996 RPG for Saturn, has the strangest hidden feature I’ve ever seen. It has unused code for a sound matching minigame that works like this:…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition I’m examining Strikers 1945 (Saturn and PlayStation) and Sengoku Blade (Saturn), which are both shooting games from Psikyo. In wrote previously about patches for the Saturn versions…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition I’m examining Gunbird, the vertical shooter from Psikyo. I found four new cheat codes for it: The Test mode menu. NoDeath mode, which makes you invincible. Skip…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Zen Nihon Pro Wres Featuring Virtua is was produced by Sega and Scarab. As the name suggests, it’s a Japanese pro wrestling game that features two Virtua Fighter characters. The…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition we’re analyzing Asuka 120% Limited Burning Fest. for Saturn. This game, like the rest of the ones in the Asuka 120% series, didn’t get released outside of…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: The trial disc for Fighting Vipers secretly has a full build of the game behind its demo restrictions. That build is from 1996-07-24, right in between the…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: I reverse engineered the password system The Lost World: Jurassic Park, revealing some long-unknown cheat codes. The new codes enable a stage select screen, an invincibility mode,…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: Keio Flying Squadron 2 has a cool debug mode: it has a stage select menu, hitbox display, a higher jump, and more. The code to enable it…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In honor of the 30th anniversary of its original release, I took a look at Astal. Here’s what I came up with: An alternate title screen A more complete level…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition I’m examining Madden NFL 97: I found a cool free camera mode that’s enabled by a special player name. And alternate method of unlocking the bonus teams….
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Bo Bayles shared a very handy Action Replay code over the weekend that unlocks the remaining 15 fighters in the Saturn exclusive four-player fighter Keriotosse! This brings the fighters roster…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition, I’ve got some new cheat codes for Grid Runner (a.k.a. Grid Run). Enter them at the Restore Game > Enter Password screen: Read on for details! Intro…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
The 3DO game Shock Wave was ported to the PlayStation in 1995 and to the Saturn in 1996. On those systems it was released as Shockwave Assault. GameFAQs lists some…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
There are a lot of 2D fighting games on the Saturn. Battle Monsters is… certainly one of them. Look, it’s no Street Fighter. It’s no Primal Rage. Surely somebody likes…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: I found some previously unknown cheat codes for the Saturn game G Vector, the 3D shooter. They give you extra modes, invincibility, a new character, and more!…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: The Incredible Hulk: The Pantheon Saga has a hidden cheat menu that grants infinite items, the ability to skip levels, and more. Action Replay codes to enable…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: I found a previously unreported cheat code for Highway 2000, the Genki racing game for Saturn. It unlocks an unlimited “free” time mode. I also found a…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: Before they joined Sega in 1999, Visual Concepts produced two sports games for Saturn. Those two games, NHL 97 and NBA Action 98, both have unreported Easter…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Saturn enthusiast Shadowmask has just published a new translation patch for Mobile Suit Gundam, the 1995 Saturn game from CRI and Bandai. Check it out! Shadowmask’s work prompted me to…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
NiGHTS Into Dreams has strange little Easter egg at the end of its Splash Garden level. Sometimes if you defeat the boss, Puffy, a door opens and something falls out…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In this edition: Power Stone for Dreamcast has a hidden debug menu that lets you test various functions, alter game parameters, and view/edit character animations. Power Stone 2, also for…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
BattleSport is a combination sports / vehicular combat game from Cyclone Studios. It was published for the 3DO in 1996, and ported to the Saturn and PlayStation in 1997. There…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
The earliest references to cheat codes for Hang-On GP1 that I found were in the 1996-02 issue of Computer and Videos Games Magazine. They knew about two of them: Codes…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
Golf games — kind of a snooze, right? I always thought so, and maybe I still do… But the Saturn has a handful of them, and I wondered if any…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
2025 is the year in which Segagaga, Sega’s video game company simulation RPG on the Dreamcast, takes place. It’s 2025 now, so I decided to check out what’s hiding on…
Bo Bayles' Hacks & Cheats
In a previous edition I wrote up how to access debug menus in a few Saturn RPGs. Let’s do it again! Here are three more games with hidden debug features:…