Under the microscope: Grid Runner

Finally, a digital version of tag

In this edition, I’ve got some new cheat codes for Grid Runner (a.k.a. Grid Run) on Saturn and PlayStation. Enter them at the Restore Game > Enter Password screen.

These are the Saturn sequences:

And these are the PlayStation equivalents:

Read on for details!

---

Intro

Sega Saturn Magazine UK opened its review of Grid Run like this:

All right, smart guy, so it’s not a very imaginative title. But if you were programming a game in which the players had to run around grids, what would you call it?

The review concludes that the game “isn’t destined to be a classic.” But a few issues later, the magazine ran some cheat codes for the game, saying “We’ve had quite a few requests for this game.”

They had three of them, all entered at the Restore Game screen:

Credit heads: A, Y, A, Right, Down, Y, Up, Right, Right, A.
Get All Flags: Down, Y, Right, A, Right, Up, Right, B, A, Down.
Free For All: Up, Y, A, Right, Up, Y, B, Down, Right, Down.

Other sources list an additional cheat:

Grid Racer: A, Y, Right, X, Right, Up, Down, Y, Right, Down

There seem to be analogous cheats for the PlayStation version as well. But are there any more? I decided to find out…

---

Technical details: reading the codes

When I looked at a memory snapshot of the game, these strings of numbers stood out to me:

00201078 "5928213923"
00202374 "1951296323"
00202380 "9328233228"
0020238c "3925212653"

Their patterns match with the known codes. I diffed some snapshots with different button sequences to find the mapping:

This is implemented by the function at 002026f8 in the U.S. Saturn version. Now we can translate the numbers to button presses, and we have all the codes! But… what do they do?

---

The code effects

In Ice Mode the squares become covered in slippery ice. This makes it hard to get up slopes:

In No Recapture mode you can’t flip an enemy’s flag to your color — once it’s been captured, it’s lost permanently.

The 1.5x speed and 2x speed modes, as their names imply, increase the pace of the game. The projectiles you fire will go much faster, and if you get tagged, you’ll be flung to a new location more quickly.

The Grid Racer+ code lets you pick three additional “Grid Racer” stages, in addition to the three unlocked by the previously-known code.

The Ending Movie code shows the ending FMV and then the credits:

---

Outro

Some fun trivia about this game: it was originally meant to be for the SNES. It’s name was going to be Eurit because you’re essentially playing tag in it (“You’re it!”). There’s a prototype of that cart here.

For previous coverage of newly-discovered cheat codes, see my archive.

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee