Under the microscope: 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure (PlayStation)
With an appearance from Dora the Explorer
As soon as I find something hidden in a game, I look to see what else its developers worked on — maybe they put secrets in other games too.
After I wrote the E.T. Interplanetary Mission article, I researched which games Diego “Egg” Link and Mark “Beno” Bell are credited on. That led me to 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure for PlayStation.
This game’s code is remarkably similar to the E.T. game’s. The annotations I made for E.T. in Ghidra let me quickly figure out what was going on in Dalmatians. I found:
A cheat code that gives you 100 lives.
A cheat code that enables a level select menu.
A sequence of steps that gives you a secret credits screen.
I also found that much of this game’s (and the E.T. game’s) code is reused in Dora the Explorer: Barnyard Buddies, a late PlayStation game that the same group of developers worked on.
Details on these things and more are below…
100 Lives
Enter this sequence at the title screen:
L2, L1, R2, R1You’ll have 100 lives when you start playing:
This same cheat works in the E.T. game.
Level select and credits
Enter this sequence at the Options screen:
L2, L1, R2, R1New menu items will be added:
You can choose a location (e.g. London) and a level with the D-pad, then press X to start playing there. This wasn’t in the E.T. game.
If you choose London (Night) and Level 02 (04), you’ll be taken to a mission that involves rescuing Patch’s friends from cages:
Collect exactly four Kanine Krunchies in that level, then quit the stage and return to the Options menu. After that, enter this sequence:
R2, R1, L2, L1A new Credits item will appear:
This displays the credits, as you might expect:
For the E.T. game you had to collect four flowers instead of dog treats, but you can see it’s the same idea. Unlike the E.T. game, there’s no edgy message at the end of the credits. The final screen says this instead:
Programming assistant: Sylvia the bird
Technical details
The cheat code handlers in this game have similar logic. The one for the title screen cheat is in the function at 80027218 (NTSC-U version). It looks like this:
if (cheat_counter == 0) and (pressed_button == L2_BUTTON):
cheat_counter = 1
elif (
(cheat_counter == 1 and pressed_button == L1_BUTTON) or
(cheat_counter == 2 and pressed_button == R2_BUTTON)
):
play_sfx(0x19, 0, 0)
cheat_counter += 1
elif (cheat_counter == 3 and pressed_button == R1_BUTTON):
play_sfx(0x18, 0, 0)
DWORD_80093534 = 0x00000001That is, it checks your input for a sequence of buttons. The sequence is indexed by a counter that increments when you get one right. After the last correct entry, a flag gets set. The logic matches what’s in the E.T. game, down to the call signature for the sound effect function.
This pattern is repeated twice more on the Options screen handler (at 800281a4). Putting in the level select sequence sets a flag at 80093534, which causes the extra menu items to appear.
The credits sequence is not checked until you’ve met a few extra conditions:
Patch has to have 3 lives (the default number you get after starting gameplay)
Patch has to have 4 Kanine Krunchies in inventory.
You have to have just come from a level that has “rescue puppies” as its goal.
The lives value is at 80092e50; the Krunchies value is at 80093318, and the goal type is at 80094120.
The Dora connection
The same development team that worked on 101 Dalmatians II also worked on Dora the Explorer: Barnyard Buddies, a late PlayStation game for young kids:
Cheat sites like GameFAQs note that putting in this sequence on the Options screen enables a level select item:
L2, L1, R2, R1This is, of course, the same as the level select code for 101 Dalmatians II. The Dora game also recognizes this sequence at the title screen:
L2, L1, R2, R1This sets the value at 80094290 to 0x64, or 100. In the Dalmatians game this is for lives, but the Dora game doesn’t use health or lives. So this code doesn’t really do anything.
Even though they never change, Dora does have a health level and lives count. What happens if you injure her manually? You get Cruella De Vil!
The Dora game has the data for a Credits item in the Options menu, but doesn’t look for a cheat code to activate it. You can manually enable it by setting 80094988 to 0x01, though.
The staff roll text matches what’s in the Dalmatians game, including the shoutout to Sylvia the Bird:
My friend Michael points out that Sylvia A. Bird appears in the credits for the mobile versions of Superman Returns, which this same team worked on.
Outro
How deep does the rabbit hole go on Easter eggs from this team? Stay tuned…
