Under the Microscope: Virtual Casino

The Virtual Casino Community Challenge here at SHIRO! wrapped up the other day. Some of its prizes were reserved for people who successfully got to the staff credits:

SHIRO! Virtual Casino Community Challenge magnets — designed by SaturnDave and made by Xiden — will be awarded to all category winners and anyone who rolls credits on the game’s Story Mode.

The community’s integrity level is pretty high; nobody asked me for a shortcut. But there is one!

To use it, pick Sound Test from the Select Mode screen.

The Sound Test screen. I appreciate that the game is saying “Kiss the Hacker,” but I’m taken.

Then follow this procedure:

Hit the play button () to start the track Kiss The Hacker . Once it’s playing, hit the next track () button. Skip through all the songs until you’re back at Kiss The Hacker. Highlight Exit , then press C while holding X+R .

The staff credits video will start. Challenge complete!

How does this work? The function at 0602d7d0 executes when you leave the Sound Test screen. It has code that looks like this:

played_count = 0; index = 0; do { played_count = (&tracks_played_06056104)[index] + played_count; index = index + 1; } while (index < 0x1c); if (((p1_held_0609b258 & 0xdf8) == 0xc0) && (0x1b < played_count)) { mode_id_060561d4 = 0x7;

The array of 1-byte values starting at 06056104 tracks which songs you played in the sound test. The code loops over that array and counts how many are nonzero.

The Mednafen emulator’s debugger showing the array of songs that have been played

After that, the code checks which controller buttons are being held. It’s looking for the logical OR of the byte patterns for R ( 0x80 ) and X ( 0x40 ).

If all songs were played and both buttons are being held, the code sets the game’s mode index to 0x07 , which is the one that plays the credits.

Outro

Parting notes for this week:

I said last week that I would write about secrets in Mighty Hits , but… whoops, that article got bumped again. I’m sure the fans of that game will understand.
Later this week, I’ll be posting a hack for a Dreamcast racing game over at my Rings of Saturn blog.
If you’re interested in contributing to a fund for preserving an early build of a canceled Saturn game called Pyramid , get in touch .

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back here next week with more Saturn hacks and cheats.

Bo Bayles

Rings of Saturn: 32bits.substack.com