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 years that you’ve spent playing infinite variations on the Space Invaders theme count for nothing. All those weekends that you’ve spent bouncing from one day-glo platform to another in one of the infinite variations on the Donkey Kong theme count for zip. And don’t even mention those dazzlingly vapid beat-’em-ups with their endless succession of moronic ‘hidden’ moves. Until you’ve mastered the silver ball you haven’t even started gaming.

I don’t think the makers of a game called Hyper 3-D Pinball that isn’t noticeably hyper and definitely isn’t 3D should be throwing shade, but I applaud their enthusiasm nonetheless.

GameFAQs and company list a handful of cheat codes for the PC version of this game, but none for console versions. I went looking and found two previously unreported codes for the Saturn version:

• Kickback mode: Never lose a ball.
• Pickup mode: Reposition your ball at will.

Details are below!

The cheat codes

My usual method for cheat code hunting in Saturn games is:

• Compare memory snapshots while holding and not holding a controller button to determine where a game stores input data.
• Set read breakpoints in the Mednafen debugger for those addresses.
• Look at the code near the breakpoint’s trigger location for logic that checks for button sequences.

I followed that method for this game and found that the function at 060094ec (NTSC-U version) is listening for button presses (stored at 06060834 ) that match one of two sequences when the game is paused.

The first sequence is:

X, X, X, Z, Z, Y, L

Once you enter it, Kickback mode is enabled! Your ball will never fall in the drain; it will always be launched back upward:

The second sequence is:

L, C, R, B, Y, Y, Y

After you’ve entered it, you can pick up the ball by holding the Z button and moving it around with the D-pad. You can even go out of bounds:

Both of these correspond to cheats in the PC version of the game. That version has you type out KICKBACK to enable the first effect and PICKUPBALL to enable the latter.

Outro

Thanks for reading! There are lots more articles about Saturn hacks and cheats in the archive here at SHIRO! .

For even more retro game reverse engineering goodness, see my Rings of Saturn blog. I’m covering the PlayStation version of Hyper 3-D Pinball there this week, and also just reported on some new Dreamcast game cheats .

	Bo Bayles
		Rings of Saturn: 32bits.substack.com