Under the Microscope: Sky Target

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 secrecy. It is said to have remarkable capabilities, far superior to any existing fighter plane in the world. The plane has been hijacked by someone from the Aviation and Space Weapon Development Center.

It was revealed in the investigation, that the hijacking was brought about by the Deldine Corporation, a multi-national weaponry enterprise. To develop the XF/A-49, the newest and best technology in the world was introduced. This top secret plane cannot be left in the hands of the Deldine Corporation.

In the game, you pilot one of four planes: an F-14D, an F-15S/MTD, an F-16C, or a Rafale M. Your goal is to take down the XF/A-49, a.k.a. “White Sword.”

It’s well-known that you can play as the XF/A-49 if you clear ranking mode with sufficiently many stars:

However, I found a cheat code that lets you play as the super fighter from the get-go. Details are below!

Unlocking the XF/A-49

Start the game in Ranking mode. Press X 49 times, then wait. A yellow arrow will appear onscreen:

After the yellow arrow appears, press Down . You’ll get the introduction to the White Sword fighter from the game’s opening:

You can then use it in any of the available missions:

Technical details

When you’re on the fighter selection screen, the function at 060430f4 (NTSC-U version) is handling your input. It’s got logic like this:

if button_pressed == X_BUTTON: x_button_counter += 1 if button_pressed_counter == 49: arrow_counter += 1

That is, each time it executes, it updates a counter if you’ve just pressed the X button. Once the 49th button press has been recorded, it starts a timer. That timer is used in another part of the function:

if button_pressed == DOWN_BUTTON: if special_fighter_unlocked or (arrow_counter > 0x3b): ... # Change the scene

So you can either access the special fighter if (a) you’ve unlocked it the normal way, or (b) the counter has reached 60.

This Action Replay code should set the arrow to be available without entering the cheat code:

3604765f 0001 # Unlock White Sword

Outro

This one took me forever to crack! I actually had to unlock the plane the normal way (I may have cheated a bit) before I figured out how to access it on the selection screen. I looked to see if there was a similar cheat code for unlocking the missions in ranking mode, but it doesn’t seem like there is — alas.

See my archive here at SHIRO! for more Saturn hacks and cheats. And for even more retro game reverse engineering articles, check out my Substack blog .

Bo Bayles

Rings of Saturn: 32bits.substack.com