Dreamcast cheat code roundup: Surf Rocket Racers, Carrier, Vermillion Desert

Grab some extra controllers

It’s often worth checking what games do with input from the non-primary controller. For example, Fighting Vipers has a hidden cheat code that uses controller 2. And Crazy Taxi has some debug features that can be activated with controller 3.

In this edition I’m examining three Dreamcast game that have unreported cheat codes that involve extra controllers:

• Surf Rocket Racers: Unlock the duck (and everything else)

• Vermillion Desert: Enable the debug menu.

• Carrier: Enable lots of debug menus.

Details are below!

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Surf Rocket Racers

This jet ski racing game from CRI was known as Power Jet Racing 2001 in Japan. I wrote about a prototype version of it in a previous edition.

GameFAQs says that if you beat all three championship modes, you can race as a rubber duck. But can you skip all of that? I decided to check it out…

Some GameHacking.org contributors have already related research here — there’s an Enable duck code listed on that site with this description:

Constantly writes 1 to 0xC4449AC.

Tracing writes to that address with Ghidra led me to the function at 8c053be4 (NTSC-U version). The code in that function looks something like this.

if (
    CONTROLLER_4_TYPE == DREAMCAST_CONTROLLER
    and CONTROLLER_4_HELD_DOWN & L_TRIGGER
    and CONTROLLER_4_HELD_DOWN & R_TRIGGER
    and CONTROLLER_4_PRESSED & B_BUTTON
):
    enable_duck()

That is: plug a Dreamcast controller into port D. Hold L and R and then press A on it. This will invoke the function I’m calling enable_duck.

After entry, the wordless fastest driver becomes available on the Driver Selection screen:

And all of the courses are marked as clear:

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Vermillion Desert

There are some tantalizing strings in the binary for this game:

8c07c650 "User System Information"
8c07c668 "User Camera Information"
8c07c680 "User Event Edit"
8c07c690 "User Light Edit"
8c07c6a0 "User Object Edit"

In trying to figure out how to make them show up, I noticed that there’s a value (8c19bbc0) that changes when you press certain buttons on the title screen. Tracing references to it led me to the function at 8c0498b0, which looks like this simplified code:

if p1_pressed == ARRAY_8c0804f0[index]:
    index += 1
    if ARRAY_[index] == 0:
        DWORD_8c17d73c ^= 1
        play_sfx()
else:
    index = 0

That is: if you button presses matches the sequence stored in a particular array, the index increments. Once the index is at the end of the array, flag flips and a sound effect plays.

Indeed, this happens! Enter this code with controller 1 at the title screen:

Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, L, R, L, R, X, Y, Up, R

This makes a mouse cursor show up on the screen. You can’t move the cursor move using controller 1. But you can with controller 4. Pressing X on that controller brings up a menu:

The menu uses the “Nindows” debugging library that’s present in several Dreamcast games (e.g. Space Channel 5, Sega GT).

There’s a bunch of stuff in here — you can alter a variety of game parameters. Here is what the Wire Frame item does:

Support Get has several useful options…

You can also control audio playback:

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Carrier

Carrier, the survival horror game from Jaleco, takes the controller tricks to another level.

Start things off entering this code on the title screen with controller 4:

(Controller 4) Hold L+R+Right+B+Start and press X

When the game starts, you’ll see a message in the corner referring to controller 4. This seems to be related to recording auto demo inputs:

Pressing Y on controller 2 will cycle through additional debug information:

Pressing Start on controller 2 will bring up a sound test, among other things:

The D-pad on controller 3 adjusts brightness, which is pretty useful in a dark game like this:

There is more to these menus, but I don’t have enough working Dreamcast controllers to thoroughly explore them. Does anybody want to loan me their extra Mad Catz pad?

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Outro

Thanks to purist and Knight0fDragon from SegaXtreme for helping me puzzle out the controller types for Surf Rocket Racers.

Thanks also to VincentNL for discovering the Vermillion Desert menu’s existence and to MetalliC for helping me read my own notes.

Which games should I examine next? Give me your suggestions in the comments.

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee