Under the microscope: Neon Genesis Evangelion: 2nd Impression & Revolutionary Girl Utena (Saturn)

What if you could interact with anime clips on your Saturn?

Sega developed and published games for several anime series in the 90s. In this edition I’m looking at two of them that have heretofore-unreported cheat codes:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion: 2nd Impression: Skip scenes.

• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Stat adjustment.

Read on for details!

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Neon Genesis Evangelion: 2nd Impression

Some Japanese cheat sites (e.g.) have this code listed:

• After playing for 15 or more times, enter C, A, R, R, Y, A, L, L at the title screen.

• Now you can press Start to skip movies you’ve already seen.

As of this writing, GameFAQs has this without the “15 or more times” and “already seen” qualifications, which is incorrect.

However, there is a cheat code that will let you skip movies without any qualifications. Enter this at the title screen:

C, A, R, R, Y, A, L, L, A, L, L

You’ll hear a sound effect for each button press you get right up to the second L. Then you’ll hear another sound effect after the fourth L.

Now pressing Start during movie clips will end them early and you can get into the action sooner:

Left: A skippable movie clip. Right: An action scene.

Technical details: The game maps each button you press to a number. The function at 06013b84 compares those numbers to this sequence:

06058f3c 07  # C
06058f3d 05  # A
06058f3e 0c  # R
06058f3f 0c  # R
06058f40 09  # Y

06058f41 05  # A
06058f42 0b  # L
06058f43 0b  # L

The flag at 06060448 gets set if you get everything right. But wait — right next to that sequence is another one:

06058f44 07  # C
06058f45 05  # A
06058f46 0c  # R
06058f47 0c  # R
06058f48 09  # Y

06058f49 05  # A
06058f4a 0b  # L
06058f4b 0b  # L

06058f4c 05  # A
06058f4d 0b  # L
06058f4e 0b  # L

This one is read by the function at 06013cc8. After entering the sequence, the flag at 06060444 gets set. Both flags get read during cut scenes, but the second one doesn’t check anything after that and allows skipping immediately.

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Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Coming Revolution

Enter this sequence during gameplay:

Up, Down, Right, Left, R, Left, Right, Down, Up

You’ve gotta go fast; the game has you on a timer. When entered correctly, this screen appears:

This allows you to adjust each character’s “Nobility of Heart” stat. From left to right, top to bottom, the settings are for:

• Utena (ウテナ)

• Anthy (アンシー)

• Chikusa (千種)

• Touga (冬芽)

• Saionji (西園寺)

• Juri (樹璃)

• Miki (幹)

Press L and R to adjust the numbers. Press B to return to the game.

Technical details: The function at 0601527c has logic that looks like this:

# Cheat has been entered completely
if cheat_buttons[cheat_counter] == 0x00:
    return 1

# Update the timer
if cheat_counter == 0:
    cheat_timer = 0
else:
    cheat_timer += 1
    if cheat_timer > 0x5a:
        cheat_counter = 0

# Check to see if the current button is correct
pressed_button = get_input()
if cheat_buttons[cheat_counter] & pressed_button == 0:
    cheat_counter = 0
else:
    cheat_counter += 1

return 0

When that function returns 1, the game switches to “mode” 0b, which is the cheat screen.

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Outro

Check out the archive for many more cheat code discovery articles. And to get new ones as they come out, subscribe to the newsletter:

Tell me which games you want to see covered in the comments! I’ll have some more cool things this weekend.

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee