In this edition:
The SoulCalibur Tokubetsu Taikenban demo disc restricts you to playing two characters in one mode, but I’ve made a patch to remove these limitations.
The disc is from about a month before the final version of SoulCalibur, so the patch lets us explore more of this prototype build.
Get the patch from SegaXtreme!
Intro
The Soulcalibur Starting Guide!! is a Japanese strategy guide bundled with a demo disc for SoulCalibur. It lets you play two rounds of arcade mode with either Mitsurugi or Xianghua before dropping you to a Coming Soon!! screen (the game likes double exclamation points).
The opening screens advise that the disc is a trial version, and that “some specifications may differ from the retail version.” Indeed, this disc’s build date (1999-06-17) is about a month earlier than the final one’s (1999-07-14).
The demo limits are superficial — all of the characters and most of the modes can be made playable with a bit of patching. Below are details on how that works, and some observations on differences between this prototype build and the final game.
Patch details
All of the modes except for Arcade are marked with “ このバージョンでは遊べません。” (Can’t play in this version) by default.
That string is at 8c109120 in memory. It’s read by the function at 8c0cc826, which handles various aspects of the mode select screen. This function refers to the table at 8c1cdbd0, which has 0s and 1s for whether each mode is visible and enabled:
We can set all 1s to enable everything. This will get us the normally-hidden Mission Battle mode, the unlockable Extra Survival mode, and even a test mode called Motion Monitor (more on this below).
Something similar is happening with the Character Select screen. There’s a table of 0s and 1s at 8c1c0b40 indicating which characters are locked. Various functions called by the one at 8c0c7e62 read this to determine display and select-ability.
Only two characters are set to unlocked by default, but changing the table entries to 0s we can make them all available:
All of them but the unlockable ones, that is. It looks like this demo doesn’t read the unlocked characters data the same way the final game does — it’s there at 8c336df8, but doesn’t have an effect. The unlockable characters are available in the Motion Monitor mode, however.
When you play Arcade mode, you’ll get the Coming Soon!! screen after completing two matches. This is because the function at 8c01f012 checks to see if your win count (at 8c207f40) is 2. If it is, it switches the game to mode 0x32, which initializes the Coming Soon!! screen.
This patch will make it skip over that logic:
8c01f89e 0900 # Skip the branch into the Coming Soon mode selectNow you can play through to the end!
One more thing: all of the Art Gallery items seem to be present. There’s a bit of code at 8c048780 that controls the display for how many points you have. It says something like this:
display_points = actual_points;
if (999999 < actual_points) {
display_points = 999999;
}To let you see the bonus items, I changed it to be more like this:
display_points = actual_points;
actual_points = 999999;
display_points = actual_points;The patch is:
8c048788 4223 # Write 999999
8c04878a 0900 # Skip the branch
Build differences
A few things don’t work at all — either they’re not implemented or the files aren’t present:
Mission Battle crashes the game when you try to select it.
The Character Profiles item the Museum also crashes the game.
So does the Ending Theater item.
Opening Direction just shows the trial version warning from above.
The game seems a little weird about the order in which you face opponents. Some will repeat, or in Survival mode you can get stuck facing Mitsurugi over and over again.
Surprisingly, there’s an Internet splash screen that differs from the Japanese final version’s:
The U.S. version has the Internet option disabled, but it says “We cannot internet…” if you manually re-activate it:
The end-of-Arcade-mode screens are a little different from the final game: the illustration text doesn’t disappear when the credits scroll, and your clear time isn’t shown on the Name Entry!! screen:
The Motion Monitor seems to be a test mode. It’s in the final versions as well, but disabled in the menu. I’m not the first to discover it — see this YouTube video from @SomeCallMePlaya for a demonstration!
Outro
What else is there? It’s been 20+ years since I’ve played this game; I’m sure there’s more to point out. Let me know!
For previous coverage of demo discs with extra content on them, see my user page on Hidden Palace.
So cool. Thanks for figuring out!