Kingdom Grandprix's secret English mode
Head for the goal despite the means!
Shippuu Mahou Daisakusen Kingdom-Grandprix, a.k.a. Kingdom Grandprix came out for the Saturn in 1996. It’s a port of an arcade shooting game by Raizing / Eighting, and was only released in Japan.
Saturn enthusiast Malenko pointed out to me that the game data seems to include an unused English translation. We fiddled around a bit, and sure enough, it can be enabled!
You can play the original English version with this Action Replay code:
360db704 0062Or you can play with patches that enable either:
The original English translation
Malenko’s improved English translation
Get the patches from SegaXtreme! Below are details on how the patches work. Both also enable the Game Mode options, which are normally accessible with a cheat code.
The first clue that there’s more than just Japanese in this game is the main 0MAHO2.BIN file. There are a lot of English strings in it:
Also, there are some suggestively named files on the game disc: TEXT_J.FTB and TEXT_E.FTB. The function at 0600e988 always picks the _J one. Can it be persuaded to pick the _E one instead?
That function gets called by another one at 0600e9ae. If I add a couple of labels, you can probably understand the Ghidra decompilation even if you don’t know C:
The region_selector lives at 060db704. It’s normally set to 00. But it seems that if we set it to a multiple of 0E, we’ll get something different?
Indeed, if we set it to 0E as the game is loading, we see a change to this screen:
And, bingo…! The introduction is in English.
There’s even an alternate title screen:
Also, the translation is really bad awesome.
In addition to being a shooting game, Kingdom Grandprix is also kind of a racing game. There’s a hidden configuration item that can disable the racing elements, however.
Go to the Options screen and highlight the Sound Mode item. Then enter this code:
Left, Right, Left, Right, Up, Up, Down, Down, Start(Interchanging Left/Up and Right/Down also works, for what it’s worth)
The value at 0608b744 changes when the code is entered successfully. It’s normally zeroed when the game boots, but we can make sure that it’s always enabled instead:
06065dd4 e301
06065dd6 2032
06065dd8 0009This changes the function at 06065dd2, which normally reads the “is Game Mode enabled” flag. We’re telling it to write to that flag instead. This causes the Options screen to display the hidden item:
It seems like there are more options from the arcade version present in the Saturn version. I’m adding it to the roster of games I explore, so if I find something cool, I’ll write about it here.
This English translation does seem to have seen the light of day before: this article at Hardcore Gaming 101 shows some of it in the arcade version. Wikipedia suggests that there was a European release of the cabinet, but doesn’t provide any details. If you know any more about this, do let me know.
I wasn’t familiar with this game before starting to hack it. It’s not bad! Thanks to Malenko for bringing it to my attention. If you know of a Saturn game with some hidden features, send me a note!
