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Under the Microscope: Soviet StrikeElectronic 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 Strike , a helicopter shooting game that also appeared on the PlayStation. I’m going to crack the password system for this game and reveal some new cheats. Beware, though: using them might spoil your fun. As the manual says: FOR THE MAXIMUM CHALLENGE, REFRAIN FROM READING ANY FURTHER.  Source:
Sega Retro
New cheat passwordsBefore you start a game, you have the opportunity to put in a password:  Some passwords change your starting level. Those are all known — they are MAROZ , KRAZHA , VERBLUD , YADRO , and PERIWOROT . Other passwords give you a cheat effect. Several of these are known — FREEBIE gives you an extra attempt, TITANIC gives you unlimited armor, COLDPIZZA gives you unlimited fuel, etc. These appeared in magazines and online back in the ‘90s. Some investigation revealed that some valid passwords remain unknown, however. There’s a list of obfuscated values stored at 06067e88 in the Saturn’s memory. When you put in a password, the game scrambles it, and then checks whether the scrambled value appears in its list. If it does, some bits in the flag field at 060686d4 get set. The scrambling process is pretty simple. This Python code will reverse it: def descramble(x): return bytes((b ^ 0x0C) - 0x3C for b in x[:10]).decode()Applying the descramble function yields several new passwords! The full list of passwords and effects is below in the appendix. The first new one is ZEN , which disables all weapons. You can’t attack, but neither can enemies. You can fly around peacefully.  Looking at some deer
On the opposite end of the spectrum is LOSALAMOS , which gives you unlimited ammunition. Whenever one of your weapons runs out, it will magically be refilled.  Low on ammo — or not
DEJAVU gives you unlimited attempts. If you’re shot down, you’ll respawn without having lost a life.  Shot down, for now
SUNRAYCER gives you unlimited fuel. This duplicates the COLDPIZZA password’s effect.  Low on fuel, temporarily
NEVERSTOP gives you unlimited ammunition, fuel, and attempts. TOOFARGONE gives you unlimited ammunition, fuel, and attempts. It also gives you the “weapons powerup” effect of the previously known GABRIEL password. The flag associated with the password WILLIAMTELL gets read when you’re shooting at enemies. I think it might improve your aim? The effect wasn’t totally clear to me — leave a comment if it is to you. OutroFor more Saturn hacking articles, see the archive here at SHIRO! . I’ll be back with another one next week! For even more retro game reverse engineering adventures, see my Rings of Saturn blog at Substack. I’m covering the PlayStation version of Soviet Strike there this week, and I’ll have an article about Nuclear Strike there soon. AppendixAll of the Saturn passwords: | Password | Effect data | |------------|-----------------------------------------------| | MAROZ | (2, 0x0) | | KRAZHA | (2, 0x1) | | VERBLUD | (2, 0x2) | | YADRO | (2, 0x3) | | PERIWOROT | (2, 0x4) | | ZEN | (1, 0x40) | | FREEBIE | (0, 0x4) | | VOODOO | (0, 0x7) | | GABRIEL | (1, 0x80) | | ALBATROSS | (1, 0x100) | | LOSALAMOS | (1, 0x2) | | TITANIC | (1, 0x1) | | DEJAVU | (1, 0x4) | | WILLIAMTEL | (1, 0x400) | | ADRENALINE | (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x4) | | TOOFARGONE | (1, 0x80), (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x4) | | SUNRAYCER | (1, 0x8) | | COLDPIZZA | (1, 0x8) | | NEVERSTOP | (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x1) |
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