Batrider + Bakraid debug mode -- Special ver, all region

[oxtsu]

Investigative reports...Batrider and Bakraid 'Special' versions explained..




DEBUG mode!

Tested with Batrider B version Feb13, 1998 Japan

debug method-
enable test mode (DIP 1 switch 1 = ON) - hold A,B,C buttons - power up - left/right with cursor on 'game mode' selects region - hit start




Region can be set to the following in test mode-
Nippon,U.S.A., Europe, Asia, German, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, China, universal

I've played about half of those so far, all were in English, except for the Korean region. All secret play modes unlocked w/o the use of codes. Rank seemed a tiny bit more tame in the beginning for non-Japan, like Korean region.

The left/right timing for selecting the regions is very strict. A little trick...if it gets stuck on a region before you get to the one you want, enter-exit out of TEXT test and try again. That will save you from having to reset the board (power off-on).






Leave it on Nippon region to enable Special version.

Special version features-

-[Batrider only] Internal rank display. At title screen lower left corner (CNTxx) It seems the rank actually starts at zero, goes up with play time, goes down with demo cycles; contrary to the previous thought of 'high start at power-up, let cycle for 30 minutes'
-displays difficulty settings on title screen
-Demo now shows every boss/stage
-Pause demo with A button
-Pause game with start button
-Hold start for slow motion
-others?
-Code viewing. While in pause you can check code by pressing C once, twice, and three times. Unpause while in one of these code modes to see code in real time.
short video clip - 8mb


Have fun!

[Zebra Airforce]

Fascinating tuff, thanks oxstu!

-[Batrider only] Internal rank display. At title screen lower left corner (CNTxx) It seems the rank actually starts at zero, goes up with play time, goes down with demo cycles; contrary to the previous thought of 'high start at power-up, let cycle for 30 minutes'

How did you start the game? Using the start button to exit the test screen sets the rank low. Did you try starting up with the test switch off to see if the rank was the same?

[freddiebamboo]

Good work there oxtsu

[zakk]

So I typed this mini 'what's up with rank' thing, and then I actually went and tried this on real hardware. That's not a rank display; it's too small of a number. I'm not even sure what it is, it didn't even change when I messed around.

--


What he said.

Also you have to be careful with batrider/garegga rank displays; I don't know what their displaying there, but they work this way (well, garegga works this way, batrider appears to work the same, I just haven't dug into it deeply yet)

There are two rank-related variables (actually more, but we're don't care about those)

There's the "raw" rank value, which is a 24-bit number. It works 'opposite' of what your intuition would say: 0xFFFFFF (16.7M) is the lowest rank. While you play, various things cause this number to go down; smaller number, higher rank.

There's also another bit of memory that's 'credit start rank'. It's basically copied into the real rank variable at the start of a credit. In garegga it starts out as a high number and every demo cycle subtracts a fixed value from it. If I remember right it's also modified at the end of your game; it's not a straight swap of your rank into that variable but your rank does factor into it.

A quick aside: most 'game' related variables are not initialized until the first time the character select screen is entered. i.e the raw rank value is actually 0 on initial power-on. It gets set to 0xFFFFFF (garegga) only upon the first title screen.

So in batrider if you just start a game normally it sets the 'raw' rank to 12.1M, which is significantly high rank. If you go into the test menu and exit it with start, it sets it to 0xFFFFFF. I haven't done any debugging, but I think it basically adds a fixed value to the 'credit start rank'.

Fascinating tuff, thanks oxstu!

-[Batrider only] Internal rank display. At title screen lower left corner (CNTxx) It seems the rank actually starts at zero, goes up with play time, goes down with demo cycles; contrary to the previous thought of 'high start at power-up, let cycle for 30 minutes'

How did you start the game? Using the start button to exit the test screen sets the rank low. Did you try starting up with the test switch off to see if the rank was the same?

[sven666]

(DIP 1 switch 1 = ON) - hold A,B,C buttons - power up

do you have to do this everytime you power it on to get the "special version" or just once?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For oxtsu,

So will your "Debug mode input command" work for the Korean version of Armed Police Batrider PCB? That is the version I have.

Sounds very intriguing, your Raizing/8ing PCB discoveries of Bakraid & Batrider are phenomenal. Keep the secret legendary PCB finds/secrets coming. ^_~

Are there other hidden secrets for other Raizing/8ing produced PCBs as well besides Bakraid and Batrider?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Twiddle]

Also you have to be careful with batrider/garegga rank displays; I don't know what their displaying there, but they work this way (well, garegga works this way, batrider appears to work the same, I just haven't dug into it deeply yet)

batrider's lowest rank is 0x100000 and counts up

the power-on default starting rank is 0xA00000 (0xB00000?) or something along the lines, which quickly devolves into "fucking insane"

also, each credit adds 0x010000 of rank to the next credit, and is reduced by the same amount each time the introductory movie is fully played until the minimum is reached

also, the numerical debug descriptors are probably just sprite/drawing variables--the rank would need an 8 digit number if not written in hex, and the lower right digit is probably just an internal "game counter" which is probably just the game starting rank

[GaijinPunch]

Very cool shit. I just got this from RGC, so should try that out. Nice find. Where did you find it, btw?

And you mention "shows code". You mean the source code? Didn't look like it from your screen shots.

[EOJ]

I wrote about something similar for Yagawa's recent games awhile back.

[gunbird18]

Great find! And I looked this up at the right time after just receiving an APB board!

Thanks, oxtsu!

Pics:

USA Region get!

Winners

Selection screen 1

Selection screen 2

The Goods

Can you feel the Raizing love? 'Bout time for it seeing as the Trading Station is getting bloated with Cave candy.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

With such a Batrider JPN version B type PCB and "Debug Mode" enabled, with an external auto-fire PCB hack, it is possible to have such "slow-motion" featured enabled. Just map auto-fire to button "A" and you're all set. ^_~

It's works just fine on such Korean region Batrider PCB without any problems.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Super X Gamma]

Since changing Korea B Board to Nippon B changes the extends to dropped items, yet lowers the rank in the process, what implications will this have on the scoreboards?

Hooray for Pause Mode!!!!!!

[charlie chong]

i tried this on batrider a version at weekend.. you can change the region(there's not as many as on b version) but there's no special options like on the b board such as the pause also when set to us and euro region none of the secret unlockables (secret course,mahou/garegga ships and single character play) are unlocked even if the dips are set to unlock them

[Acid King]

i tried this on batrider a version at weekend.. you can change the region(there's not as many as on b version) but there's no special options like on the b board such as the pause also when set to us and euro region none of the secret unlockables (secret course,mahou/garegga ships and single character play) are unlocked even if the dips are set to unlock them

Yeah but the codes are easy. Bakraid would be annoying because of the way you have to input the codes, with Batrider you can crank out all of the codes in the first countdown after the first coin drop. Thats what I did before I reverted back to playing Japan region. Not having to catch extends just didn't seem right to me.

[oxtsu]

You can get Special version for all the different regions. As such-

If you hold ABC all during the test mode while doing your region selection (and exit out of test still holding ABC)=
Normal

if you just do ABC at initial powerup and let go while you're in test=
Special

If you leave it on Nippon region (or perhaps if your board is default Korea --> Korea) it will always be Special however you do the method.

another thing I've been meaning to add-

For regular B version, you can enable the rank display CNTxx by holding 1P+2P start buttons before the title screen pops up.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Thanks oxtsu for the clairfication of such regional differences of the Batrider PCBs. Will have to give my Korean (default) region Batrider PCB a spin and see what's available to mess around with. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[charlie chong]

ta for that oxstu i think i was holding abc while selecting the region.. i'll have another shot tonight !

[brannon]

The left/right timing for selecting the regions is very strict.

actually, based on some (admittedly very brief) testing, i think it just stops working if you hit left or right too quickly. i left it for about 5-10 seconds between selections and it still worked fine, so it can't be that strict.

another very handy thing nobody else seems to have noticed: in the special version, if you hit left or right with your cursor over the special course button, you can select which boss you want to fight. everything in special version seems to work the same as if you set the invincible dipswitch to on (pause/slow enabled etc), except predictably you're not invincible, which makes it far more useful for practising. also, since you select this prior to your character selection, you can fight any bosses with any characters; here's strawman-c fighting hayate, just on the off chance that you're incredibly skeptical.

also, if you want to change your region but still be able to play advanced course etc., it's a selectable option in final burn alpha's dipswitches menu. i don't particularly recommend fba for playing batrider though as the sound emulation seems to be slightly off.

[Plasmo]

Just spent some time on special version and the different regions and here are my observations.
I have a Korean B board and wanted to play the japanese version.

-You have to switch regions everytime you power up the PCB, it's not possible to change region constantly

-If you select Nippon version, ALL features that are originally only available on a japanese PCB will be there:
+you have to collect extends
+you can raise your shot frequency
+you can change the colour of enemy bullets
+lower rank and difficulty

-I was not able to only change region, at the same time it gave me special version too each time. Since in special version you can pause and slow the game down, you automatically do weird stuff when you raise shot frequency for example (press start and press A a couple of times)
-If you hold start and press B, you get an additional score display in the upper left part of the screen, which gives you information on how many points you exactly get from which enemy (similar to Bakraid). Very interesting and useful for the ST.

[captpain]

Cool, so the Korean board owners can play with dropped extends now... that's an interesting development.

[Plasmo]

-I was not able to only change region, at the same time it gave me special version too each time. Since in special version you can pause and slow the game down, you automatically do weird stuff when you raise shot frequency for example (press start and press A a couple of times)

This is actually not true.
I did some more testing and apparently I must've held ABC for too long. It's possible to play 1:1 the japanese version with a korean board. That means, as long as you have a B version, it doesn't matter which region it is, so you can save some money there.

About the score display: It's possible to activate it with Start+B even if you are not in special version. So this must be a common feature of the japanese version then. Can anyone confirm this? I've never read about this anywhere, or maybe I'm blind - Either way, this is awesome.

EDIT:
Nevermind, score display is a common and well known feature (it's even in Icarus' ST) of the japanese version, which I have only yet discovered.

[cools]

Has anyone investigated what bytes need to be swapped on the ROMs in order to select the "default" region the board boots up in?

[rtw]

Has anyone investigated what bytes need to be swapped on the ROMs in order to select the "default" region the board boots up in?

ROM's are protected by a checksum so that has to be sorted out first.

[zakk]

Has anyone investigated what bytes need to be swapped on the ROMs in order to select the "default" region the board boots up in?

ROM's are protected by a checksum so that has to be sorted out first.

If it's anything like Garegga it's trivial. I think it was just a straight crc16/32 when I did it. I couldn't find one of the values to change to the correct one so I just modified the boot up check to always return true.
[time passes, I edit this post]

Oh wait, now I know what it was. You don't need to sort it out at all, it shows you what checksum it calculates before it fails. You just have to watchpoint it and then change what it compares it to. That or just defeat the integrity check.

[cools]

Haven't seen it mentioned - just noticed the USA Unlimited version of Bakraid in MAME has all features unlocked as default, even has a PLAYER/TEAM select menu without needing to move the stick at all.

[kernow]

Interesting thread, I'll be doing this for a while as I know I won't be able to stand the korean menus for long.

Erm, when I get roms burnt, probably from hobbyroms, which ones should I actually go for if I want english language throughout, and the biggest feature / secret set? Is that possible or should I just get it done as JP version B?

Cheers.

oh god just reading about all the secrets in this on world of arcades, what have I let myself in for

[cools]

Erm, when I get roms burnt, probably from hobbyroms, which ones should I actually go for if I want english language throughout, and the biggest feature / secret set? Is that possible or should I just get it done as JP version B?

It's possible to play 1:1 the japanese version with a korean board. That means, as long as you have a B version, it doesn't matter which region it is, so you can save some money there.

The different B version ROMs simply change the default region. Everything else is identical - changing the region using special mode (also adds in handy pause button mechanics like Ibara!) gives you that version of the game (Japanese has dropped extends using a European B version ROM).

I'm still hoping theres a way of getting a Great Britain default version

[kernow]

[cools]

Just flip the DIP switches to unlock the important hidden stuff. The rest is fluff that's fun to mess with for five minutes.

[kernow]

This works great, really good find. I haz english menus o//

Its hardly a pain to hold ABC and change the region on power on either so I'm not even sure I'll get the ROM's burnt now.
Maybe one day.