Under the Microscope: Tennis Arena

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 out there, though, that’s not saying much and Tennis Arena is far from perfect.

The game was released worldwide for PlayStation, but the Saturn version never made it out of Japan — alas.

It’s long been known that you can unlock two extra characters and a bonus course on the PlayStation version by putting in a button code while the game starts up. But does that effect exist on the Saturn version?

Answer: yes! I found an unlock cheat that matches the PlayStation one, plus another previously unreported code that enables Big head mode. Details are below…

The cheat codes

The well-known PlayStation code is entered at the Smart Dog screen. It’s Up , Down , Left , Right , Start.

I don’t think anybody’s ever written it down, but this also works on the Saturn version. The two extra players are Mick McKenzie and Mishka Kochev:

Left: McKenzie. Right: Kochev.

And the extra court is Canyon :

Here’s something new, however. If you enter Up, Down, Left, Right, A at the Smart Dog screen instead, you get Big head mode:

Left: Normal heads. Right: Big heads.

It’s… kind of unpleasant looking.

Technical details

On the Saturn version, the function at 06021ecc is listening for button presses while the Smart Dog logo is displayed. In pseudo-Python, it’s doing this:

correct_buttons = 0 if correct_buttons == 0: if P1_PRESSED == UP_BUTTON: correct_buttons = 1 elif correct_buttons == 1: if P1_PRESSED == DOWN_BUTTON: correct_buttons = 2 else: correct_buttons = 0 elif correct_buttons == 2: if P1_PRESSED == LEFT_BUTTON: correct_buttons = 3 else: correct_buttons = 0 elif correct_buttons == 3: if P1_PRESSED == RIGHT_BUTTON: correct_buttons = 4 else: correct_buttons = 0 elif correct_buttons == 4: if P1_PRESSED == START_BUTTON: EXTRA_CHARACTERS_UNLOCKED = True elif P1_PRESSED == A_BUTTON: BIG_HEADS_UNLOCKED = True else: correct_buttons = 0

That is, it keeps track of where you are in the Up, Down, Left, Right sequence. After that, you can either press Start to unlock the extra characters or A to enable big heads.

Outro

For many more Saturn cheat code discoveries, see my archive here at SHIRO! . And for new retro game reverse engineering articles every week, subscribe to my Rings of Saturn blog on Substack .

Bo Bayles

Rings of Saturn: 32bits.substack.com