Bonus: Dragon's Dream

Play a small bit of the long-dormant online RPG

Dragon’s Dream was an early online RPG that allowed Saturn owners and Windows PC owners in Japan to play together using Fujitsu’s NIFTY-Serve dialup service. The game’s servers were taken down in 1999, and since the game has no offline mode, you can’t really experience any of the Saturn version anymore.

Dragon’s Dream won’t even boot up without a modem attached

…or can you? I looked at the game disc, which was distributed for free in Japan, and found that it has a few debug features. By manipulating those, I was able to make a patch that allows you to try out the game’s battle mode!

It’s not much, but it’s something. Get the patch from SegaXtreme!

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Patch details

For reasons I don’t fully understand, the game lets you past the “no modem” screen if it first reads a value of 00 from address 06060f6f and then reads a value of 01. My patch makes that happen:

0601057e 23c0  # Write a 1 instead of a 0
06010c5c 0009  # Avoid the call that would write another 1
06010c5e 0009

The game has a debug mode that’s enabled by the presence of a save file named DRGDRM_DBG!. That sets a flag at 06060eb0, which is zeroed earlier in the loading process. This patch just enables it instead:

06010514 1408  # Write a 1 instead of a 0

Now the game will boot up to a title screen with extra items!

One more patch: you need the debug flag set to be able to run battle mode, but the screen will get covered in informational messages as you play:

We can turn down the verbosity with this patch:

06020f1c 000b  # Early return from the debug printer
06020f1e 0009

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The debug screen

Choose Debug from the title screen to get the debug options menu. The items are:

• Music test

• Sound effects test

• Debug enabled

• Hostname

• Clear system files

• Clear character files

The sound test items isn’t quite as good as the ones in the normal options screen, alas. The debug toggle manipulates the 06060f6f address mentioned above. I’m not sure what changing the hostname does.

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Battle mode

Here’s the playable bit! Normally there’s a message box at the top of the screen. You can press X to dismiss it

You can attack the dragon from the menu, and it will fight back:

I think this will continue until you decide to stop — the dragon doesn’t seem to be able to damage you for real.

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Outro

Alas, the rest of the game still seems to be dependent on the game’s long dormant servers. I was able to get this screen working, but not much else:

You can browse this menu, but if you leave then you get the “disconnecetd” screen

Do send me a message if you’re interested in examining this game! I’m happy to share my notes. There’s quite a bit of data about the game’s network messages in plaintext, which might provide clues if somebody wanted to try to implement a server.

For more mods from me, see:

• NiGHTS Into Dreams — the pedestrian challenge

• Burning Rangers — restore 2 player co-op

• Fighting Vipers — enable unused character costume

• Fire ProWrestling S: 6Men Scramble — restore unused characters

• High Velocity — restore unused 4 player mode

• Clockwork Knight 2 — change gameplay styles