Playing the auto demo: Surf Rocket Racers (Dreamcast)

a.k.a. Power Jet Racing 2001, Jet Race, and Surf Rockers?

The NTSC-U retail version title screen

Aero Dancing F: Todoroki Tsubasa no Hatsu Hikou is a minor entry in the Aero Dancing series. It’s an updated edition of Aero Dancing F, which was released outside of Japan as AeroWings 2.

Why examine it? Well, it’s got a preview of Power Jet Racing 2001, which was released outside of Japan as Surf Rocket Racers) on it. You can access it from the menu:

The preview section of the Aero Dancing F update disc

And why is that interesting? Two reasons: (1) the preview isn’t a movie; it’s an auto demo rendered by the game engine, and (2) the game engine files on the disc are from 2000-09-27, more than a month before the final U.S. version (2000-11-05) and more than three months before the final Japanese version (2001-02-09).

I made a patch to make this auto demo actually playable. It’s pretty cool to see how it differs from the final version. Lots of things seem to have been re-worked in the last weeks of development, including the game’s title.

Below are details on the differences I spotted and an explanation of how the patch works. Get the patch from SegaXtreme!

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Prototype differences

You can’t see it in the usual auto demo, but this preview has what seems to be a very early version of the title screen. It calls the game Jet Race!

Left: the prototype demo. Right: the final game.

The mode select screen is a static image in this build, but in the final game it’s rendered over moving water. Notice that the available items are different! Network Battle is present, but it doesn’t actually work (the text says that it’s not currently available).

Left: the prototype demo. Right: the final NTSC-J version.

The driver select screen doesn’t have the characters shown; it just uses the same picture of a jet ski for all of them:

Left: the prototype demo. Right: the final game.

Several stages can be selected from the menu, but some of them crash (presumably due to lack of files). Others are visibly unfinished — check out these placeholder graphics:

Left: the prototype demo. Right: the final game.

The Technical Challenge mode in the prototype demo is pretty barebones. It’s got your stats in the usual debug font on screen, and the locations seem different:

Left: the prototype demo. Right: the final game.

You can access the staff roll from the menu, unlike the final version. Interestingly, this version has Japanese text, but credits Crave — the overseas publisher.

Also, these credits call the game Surf Rockers!

Left: The beginning of the prototype demo’s credits. Right: The unfinished ending.

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Technical details

The “main loop” for the auto demo is in the function at 8c018db0. Before that loop starts is a function call that looks like this:

FUNC_8c05036e("AERO DEMO START")

My patch simply replaces that function call with a no-op instruction:

8c018b7e 0900  # Don't launch the auto demo

This gets us to the mode select screen! That’s enough to play the game and check out the modes, but there’s this annoying issue: if you press Start at any time, you’ll bail out and go back into Aero Dancing F: Todoroki Tsubasa no Hatsu Hikou.

These two patches nullify that behavior:

8c01cdae 00e0  # Read no input during the Start button check
8c0337e6 00e0  # Ditto

Some of the menus don’t let you back out of them. You can do a soft reset with A+B+C+Start, but this once again takes you back into Aero Dancing. So these patches boot straight into the auto demo:

0c4e230a 27e1  # Launch mode 27 for the previews screen
0c4e3276 0900  # Tell it we pressed A
0c4e327c 03e0  # And that item 03 was selected

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Outro

For previous adventures in auto demo control, see the articles on Fighting Force and Burning Rangers. For more prototype demo articles, see the archive.

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee