Under the microscope: M&M's Shell Shocked (PlayStation)

Candy coated fury

This article is about the 2001 PlayStation game M&M’s Shell Shocked. The game’s manual explains the setup:

Yellow has made the biggest mistake of his peanutty life-he left the M&M's® MINIs® in charge of the candy factory! Needless to say, it's a candy-coated catastrophe. In no time flat, the tiny, hysterical candies turned the factory upside-down. All of the M&M's® candy formulas have been lost […] Get to the factory and put things right before the Big Boss finds out!

What could possibly be interesting about a candy themed Crash Bandicoot clone? Lots, it turns out — the programmers put in some Easter eggs that have stayed hidden for 24 years:

• A button code that unlocks every level

• A button code to activate a cheat menu with level select, invincibility, and more

• A button code that makes the programmer’s name scroll across the screen.

Below are details about what they do and the reverse engineering that went into finding them.

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Unlock all levels

Start a new game. Enter this sequence at the levels select screen:

Down, Left, Right, L2, Up, R1, Down, R2

All of the Closed stages will be marked as open:

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Cheat menu

Enter this sequence at the level select screen:

L1, L2, Left, Right, Up, Down, R1, R2

A new screen will pop up, the colorful cheat menu:

Print puts something like coordinates at the bottom of the screen:

Yellow Off turns off the display of your Yellow M&M:

God Mode is pretty handy:

• You can’t die

• You can press Triangle to reset your position (like if you fall into a pit)

• You can press R1 to get extra lives

• You can press R2 to skip a level

• You can press L2 to look at loaded sprites

It’s unclear what Run Mode does. Music doesn’t do anything.

Video looks a little buggy, but it works. Level Choose Level does what you would expect:

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Programmer’s name

Enter this sequence at the level select screen:

Left, Up, Right, Down, L1, L2, R1, R2

This message will start scrolling:

PSX Programmer Kazlitin Andriy, 2001

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Technical details

User Hacc at GameHacking.org posted an Action Replay code for unlocking all levels:

Following references to the RAM address shown (using Ghidra) leads to the function at 80043d78. It makes a series of calls like this:

if FUN_800437c0(DATA_8019b22c) != 0:
    levels_available = 0x06
if FUN_800437c0(DATA_8019b258) != 0:
    levels_available = 0x09
# ...
if FUN_800437c0(DATA_8019b360) != 0:
    levels_available = 0x1b

When the function at 800437c0 is called with different arguments, it has different effects. Those arguments are references to data structures that have these elements:

• A counter: This keeps track of how many correct buttons you’ve pressed.

• A timer: This seems to determine how long before the counter resets and you have to start input over.

• Eight pointers to inputs: Each pointer indicates a location that is set to a nonzero value when you’re holding a particular button.

In addition to the “unlock all” code above, the game also recognizes these:

• Unlock 6 levels: Left, L1, Right, L2, Up, R1, Down, R2

• Unlock 9 levels: Start, L1, Right, L2, Up, R1, Up, R1

• Unlock 12 levels: Left, Start, Right, L1, Up, R2, Up, R2

• Unlock 15 levels: Left, L1, L2, Down, R1, Right, Up, R2

• Unlock 18 levels: Right, L1, L2, Down, R1, Down, Left, R2

• Unlock 21 levels: L2, L1, Start, L2, Up, R1, Up, R2

• Unlock 24 levels: Right, Left, Down, R1, Up, L1, L2, R2

Interestingly, Hacc also knew about some of the cheat effects:

Now we know how to access them without AR codes.

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Outro

MobyGames tells me that the programmer mentioned above, Kazlitin, also worked on a Skittles themed game called Darkened Skye. Will it be featured in a future edition of Rings of Saturn? Possibly so…

For more articles on cheat code discovery, see the archive. Tell me which other games I should be examining!

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee