Under the microscope: Alexi Lalas International Soccer (PlayStation)

Reverse engineering reveals another NSFW Easter egg

We’ve covered a lot of Easter eggs from game developers in this Under the Microscope series. Some are wholesome, like the marriage proposal in NCAA Final Four 97. Others are goofy, like the slide show in Bugriders. Others are kind of crass, like the nude card girl in Knockout Kings.

This article is about, uh, another crass one:

I swear this is a real screenshot

I’ll explain more, but let’s do some reverse engineering first.

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The reverse engineering

Some cheat sites list an All Teams (EU Versions) code for this game:

Screenshot from GameFAQs

Is there an equivalent code for the US version of the game? I opened the RALibretro Memory Inspector on the team selection screen to see what I could find.

One thing that stood out was this: memory address 800e7cf0 changes when you press controller buttons. I’ll call this the accumulator. Each press shifts its value left by 4 bits (or one hex digit) and then ORs it with a value for the button: Up=00, Down=01, Left=02, Right=03, L2=08, R2=09, L1=0a, R1=0b.

When entering the GameFAQs code, the accumulator changes like this:

Initial -----> 00000000
Press L2 ----> 00000008
Press Left --> 00000082
Press R2 ----> 00000829
Press R1 ----> 0000829b
Press L2 ----> 000829b8
Press Right -> 00829b83

Surprise, surprise: this code actually does work on the US version of the game. When you press Left after entering the code, the accumulator resets to 00000000 and the Secret region is enabled:

The secret teams, unlocked. We had the answer all along!

I set a read breakpoint for the accumulator’s address to see how this worked. That led me to the function at 8001d6e8. Its logic looks like this pseudo-Python:

Code adapted from Ghidra’s decompilation

I loaded a memory snapshot into Ghidra to see where this function is called. The code at 8009eb34 is what’s checking for the All Teams value:

The first argument matches the target accumulator value from above

Just above that code are checks for accumulator values that unlock individual special teams. You don’t really need them once you have the All Teams code, but in the interest of completeness, here’s a table with all of them:

You can press Up eight times before putting in these codes to reset the accumulator to 0. And you should end each code with Left or Right to ensure that the accumulator gets read.

After the team unlock checks, there’s a check for the… let’s call it the Lewd lineup effect.

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The Lewd lineup effect

Step 1 for this code is to unlock the secret teams:

• Select Friendly Match from the main menu.

• On the team selection screen, press Up eight times to clear the accumulator.

• Press L2, Left, R2, R1, L2, Right, Right. You’ll hear a sound effect.

The Secret region should now be available. Step 2 is to choose particular teams:

• Set the team on the left side to Secret/England 1966 (team ID 54).

• Press X and then the team on the right side to Europe/Rep of Ireland (team ID 30).

Step 3 is to enter another code:

• Press Up eight times to clear the accumulator, then press Up until you land on the top row (where you can select which controller / CPU controls the team).

• Press R1, R1, L2, Right, R2, Left, Right. You’ll hear a sound effect.

• Press Start to begin the match.

The setup process

Don’t press anything during the match introduction. As the players line up, you’ll see… well, you know already:

Here’s a comparison with the normal lineup, from the wide angle:

And from the closeup:

I have no idea if this is supposed to be a slam against the England 1966 team, or whether the matchup with the Republic of Ireland team is significant. If you know, leave a comment!

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Outro

A few parting notes:

(1) The Lewd lineup effect is not in the PAL version (called Three Lions in the UK) of the game – there’s no check for the associated button sequence.

(2) I think the Lewd Lineup effect is in the PC version, along with what look like more cheat effects. I ordered the disc, but couldn’t get it to run on my Windows 98 machine. If you’ve got a copy of the game and want to check, leave a comment.

(3) Both the US and PAL PlayStation versions have a multi-part cheat that doesn’t do anything:

• Unlock all teams.

• Enter L1, L1, R2, Left, L2, Right, Right on the team selection screen.

• Set left team to Secret/Z Axis and the right team to North America/El Salvador.

• Press R1, R1, L2, Right, R2, Left, Right.

• You’ll hear a sound effect – a person saying “Oh, yeah!”

My guess from the code is that this was supposed to enable cartoon sound effects or something. After the sound effect plays, a flag gets set that makes the game look at WSPSXFFX.HIT. But there’s no audible effect while playing.

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee

Thanks for reading! Rings of Saturn will return next week with more retro game reverse engineering goodness. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered to your inbox: