Here is how GamePro’s review summed up Criticom:
Criticom is the worst fighting game of the year.
A 1996 Usenet user had this to say:
i had the playstation version and i had to return it to the store because it was like being poked in the face with a heated bit of metal repeatedly.
And the game’s executive producer, Stan Liu, commented:
Criticom was not the best of games!
Being able to cheat would probably help things. There are five well-known passwords that enable special effects for the PlayStation version of Criticom. But as far as I can tell, only one special password has been published for the Saturn version.
I’m here to remedy the situation! I found the four missing passwords. Details on how to enter them and what they do are below.
Upgrade to rank 3
Go to the Options > Load/ Save screen and enter this password for Dayton on the P1 side:
P1 Dayton: GENF
All characters will be upgraded to Rank 3:
Upgrade to rank 2
To upgrade everybody to rank 2, enter this password for Gorm on the P2 side:
P2 Gorm: JELE
Play as Emperor
You can play as the final boss! Enter this password for any character:
Either player, any character: IICS
Emperor will become available from the character select screen:
Here’s a shot of him in action:
Special move enhancement
Enter this password for any character for the last effect:
Either player, any character: POWR
This does something with your player’s special moves, but I can’t quite pin down exactly what. Update: Reader DJ Tatsujin explains what’s going on here:
Testing out the POWR password, it just seems to grant you the use of all of the character's special moves no matter what level you are - you can be level 1 and still use level 2 and 3 moves.
I suppose part of the point of this is that the characters change in appearance between the levels. So, if you like the costume a character wears at level 2, you can keep that costume and use level 3 moves with the POWR password.
Technical details
All five passwords are encoded as plain ASCII strings. Here’s where they’re stored in memory:
06021254 "GENF" # All to Rank 3
0602125c "JELE" # All to Rank 2
06021264 "TTAM" # View ending
0602126c "IICS" # Unlock Emperor
06021274 "POWR" # Special move thing
The function at 0602127a
has references to these. The logic for the GENF code is something like this:
if (
selected_column == 0 # P1's column
and selected_row == 2 # Dayton's row
and player_input == "GENF"
):
for i in range(8):
... # Unlock stuff for each character
The POWR password sets the value at 06079c30
. Normally it’s 0x0
, but with the cheat enabled it’s 0x1800300
.
Outro
Here’s the full list of passwords for both systems:

Testing out the POWR password, it just seems to grant you the use of all of the character's special moves no matter what level you are - you can be level 1 and still use level 2 and 3 moves. I suppose part of the point of this is that the characters change in appearance between the levels. So, if you like the costume a character wears at level 2, you can keep that costume and use level 3 moves with the POWR password.
Also, this would let you start from the "level 1" group of characters in single-player mode while having the full use of your character's special move set. If you have your character at level 3 via password, it launches you straight into the final grouping of opponents and then fighting The Emperor.
Thanks again!
Criticom is what you get if you ordered Saturn games off Temu, ha ha. Still those are awesome. Going to try them out today.