Under the microscope: Alone in the Dark 2 (PlayStation)

The long-lost “Benny Hill!” and “God!” modes in *Alone in the Dark 2*

In the last edition, I looked through the cheat sites and found that they all had bogus codes listed for the Saturn version of Alone in the Dark 2.

Things aren’t much better for the PlayStation version. As far back as 1999, cheat sites have had this code:

Cheat mode: Press L1, L2, Left at the main menu.

You won’t be surprised to learn that it doesn’t work. But I found the real cheat mode code, plus another one. Details are below!

---

The “Peace and respect” debug menu

Like the Saturn version of Alone in the Dark 2, the PlayStation version has a debug menu. To access it from the main menu:

• Hold L1+R1 and keep them held while entering the rest of the code.

• Highlight Easy and press Left.

• Highlight Average and press Right.

• Highlight Difficult and press Left.

The debug menu will pop up if you got it right. Its title is Peace and respect:

The PlayStation debug menu

The BATL - Baton de Loa item shows a cutscene with a twirling baton:

The baton in action

The ROLEPIR item shows a book viewer, similar to the one in the Saturn version.

El generico brings up the credits. Information systeme shows build information:

Left: The staff credits. Right: The build info.

---

“Benny Hill!” and “God!” modes

You can also enter another code on the main menu:

• Hold L1+R1 and keep them held while entering the rest of the code.

• Highlight Easy and press Right.

• Highlight Average and press Left.

• Highlight Difficult and press Right.

You won’t get any confirmation, but the game will set the value at 800a18b0 from 0x00 to 0x01.

Once that’s done, you can activate Benny Hill! mode. Hold L2+R2+X during gameplay and press Select. The pause menu will appear. When you dismiss it, everything will be sped up significantly:

Benny Hill! mode activated

There’s another effect: hold L2+X during gameplay, then press L1+Select. If the pause menu appears, you got it right (if the Actions menu appears, try again). When you dismiss it, God! mode will be enabled:

God! mode activated

This makes you invincible.

---

Technical details

The PlayStation version’s main menu code doesn’t resemble the Saturn version’s at all. It is listening for a cheat code, but in a totally different way.

If you hold L1+R1 and press Left or Right on the D-pad, the value in register s7 gets updated:

• If Easy is highlighted, Right appends a value of 0x2 and Left appends a value of 0x3.

• If Average is highlighted, Right appends 0x4 and Left appends 0x5.

• If Difficult is highlighted, Right appends 0x6 and Left appends 0x7.

The relevant code looks like this in Ghidra’s decompiler when labels are added:

    if ((held_buttons & 0xc00) == 0xc00) {
      if (((held_buttons & 1) != 0) && (cursor_pos == 3)) {
        return 2;
      }
      if ((d_pad_dir & 0xc) != 0) {
        cheat_tracker = cheat_tracker * 0x10 + ((cursor_pos << 0x10) >> 0xf) + (d_pad_dir >> 2 & 1);
      }
    }

The variable I’m calling cheat_tracker is stored in register s7. The game is looking for the value 0x347 to activate the debug menu and 0x256 to activate the cheat modes.

Interestingly, this fragment shows another strange hidden feature. Normally, the main menu function returns 0x01 if you select Easy mode, 0x02 if you select Average mode, 0x03 if you select Difficult mode, and 0x04 if you select Resume saved game. But if you hold L1+R1 and press Select when Difficult is highlighted, you play Average mode. I have no idea why!

---

Outro

I checked the 3DO version of Alone in the Dark 2, but I didn’t find any cheat code handling on its main menu - alas. I’ll make a new post if I come up with anything else interesting.

To get Rings of Saturn every week, subscribe to the e-mail version. Thanks for reading!