Under the microscope: Darkened Skye (GameCube)
Every candy brand deserves a video game
In a previous edition I looked at a game from Simon & Schuster Interactive that’s about M&M’s. In this edition I’m examining a game from the same publisher that’s about Skittles.
The manual explains the premise:
In the Foretimes, the Great Rainbow arched the skies. From this flowed mysterious colored artifacts that the people called SKITTLES®. Alas, in modern times the Rainbow has been “appropriated” by Lord Necroth and his Dark Prism. All magic has been outlawed. Necroth has rounded up all (well, almost all) SKITTLES® for himself and his own foul purposes
I’m here to help you restore power (and candy) to the people by revealing the game’s secret Cheats! menu. Let’s dive in…
The reverse engineering
When you start a new game, the mode select screen has four items: New Game, Save/Load, Options, and Credits. Those four strings are stored in RAM starting at 8013c61c, along with a suggestive fifth one:
8013c61c "New Game"
8013c628 "Save/Load"
8013c634 "Options"
8013c63c "Credits"
8013c644 "Cheats!"Two functions have references to the Cheats! string. Let’s focus on the one at 80010f68, which has logic that looks like this:
def enable_cheats(button_index):
input_buffer += button_index << buffer_bit_shift
buffer_bit_shift += 4
if (input_buffer & target_buffer) != input_buffer:
input_buffer = 0
input_bit_shift = 0
if input_buffer == target_buffer:
FUN_8001001c("Cheats!")This function gets called when you press certain controller buttons on the mode select screen. It’s tracking a cheat code by comparing the sequence of buttons you’ve pressed to a target. Correct button presses get stored in a buffer; incorrect ones reset the buffer.
The target value (stored at 801d4bb4) is 05214321. You can hit the target with this sequence:
It’s probably possible to puzzle out how the inputs get mapped to the indexes shown, but I just pressed buttons until I got the right values into the buffer.
Cheats!
As shown above, enter Up, Down, Left, Right, Up, Down, X+Y at the mode select screen to enable the Cheats! menu:
Levels gives you a level select menu, of course:
Next Level and Activate All Spells are more useful when you’re actually playing the game. They’re available via the pause menu, which also get the Cheats! item:
Cinematics lets you play the three movies:
You’ll be happy to know that the game has a happy ending. Skye and Dorian share a kiss under the Skittles rainbow:
Outro
Part of the Darkened Skye website is preserved on the Wayback Machine, and I recommend you check it out.
Interestingly, the site doesn’t mention the Skittles connection at all. This interview with executive producer Dale DeSharone explains:
By the time it was finished, Simon & Schuster didn't want people to think of it as a Skittles game. They almost pulled Skittles from the game. But, we had woven Skittles into the game-play and some text. So, they left it but you won't see Skittles on the box cover.
Which other weird retro games should I be looking at? Tell me in the comments!
