Under the microscope: Phoenix 3 (3DO)

From the ashes

In this edition:

• There are two long lost cheat codes for the 3DO game Phoenix 3. I found them!

• I reached out to Stefan Posthuma, one of the game’s developers, and got his recollections of programming for the 3DO.

That’s right, the 3DO is in scope for this blog. Fear not, Saturn fans; I will have more for you next week. I’ll also have some PlayStation and Dreamcast things to share in the near future.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

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Intro and developer commentary

Phoenix 3 is a combination run-and-gun / shoot-em-up game. It was developed by Gray Matter and published by The 3DO Company in 1995. Unlike some other 3DO games, it didn’t get ported to any other systems.

The game was primarily programmed by Brady Sheppard, Stefan Posthuma, and Jim Koornneef. I got in touch with Stefan Posthuma, who “unwittingly came to Canada from Holland to help out programming.” He did “most of the 3DO O/S stuff, program structure, and other nitty-gritty things normal people try to stay away from.”

Here are Stefan’s recollections, lightly edited for inclusion here:

I had no idea about the 3DO when I was assigned to that project. I came from a Commodore 64 / Atari ST background. It turns out that the 3DO was a bit of a weird evolution of the Commodore Amiga.

The development software ran on a Mac, which was amusing to work with back then. It had a very early C++ compiler, the type that translated the C++ to C before feeding it to a C compiler. I still remember when the classes got too big, the translated C would be so bloated that the compiler would crash.

At some point Nick Gray decided that the levels had to be loaded while the FMV was playing. I spent a month figuring out how to layout the data in a sequential fashion and weaving it into the video stream so the two could stream together. Once it was all done and Nick realized that this meant the videos could not be interrupted while playing, he changed his mind.

All of that work was for nothing, but as a result of it the game ended up with perfectly sequenced data and loaded very quickly. I later applied the same techniques later at EA, optimizing load times for games like FIFA and NHL. This made my career there as a systems programmer. So I guess it was worth it after all!

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Cheat mode

Enter the codes at this screen

Hold RS at the title screen, then enter:

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

You’ll see this image before the game starts, which describes the cheat effects:

When’s the last time somebody saw this screen?

Everything works as shown except the “finish level” effect, which seems to actually be X+LS.

Invincibility, low gravity, and maximum ammo

I think you’re supposed to also be able to activate a “Psychedelic mode” with X+RS+B+Start, but I couldn’t get it to work. I was able to alter the flag manually, however.

Manually activated “psychedelic mode”

There also seems to have been an “Extra time” cheat at one point, but I couldn’t make that work with the controller either.

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The other credits

There’s another code, too! After you put in the first one, hold RS and enter:

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

The “Other credits” will start rolling:

Here’s a video!

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Technical details

How did I find this? This bit of memory is what caught my eye:

00080964  "rrlldduu"
0008096d  \x00\x00\x00\x00
00080970  "cheat activated.\n"

The code loaded to 00080854 checks whether you’re holding RS. If you are, subsequent button presses will fill up the buffer starting at 0009ff00. But each entry pushes the previous ones over, so what you need to enter is the reverse of what’s in the string above.

There’s another string with the other code:

00080a04  rddullud

When a stage is loaded, these strings describe the effects:

0008194c  "Hero invicibility: %d\n"
000819c4  "gravity: %d\n"
00081a70  "all guns and happy ammo added\n"
00081b84  "Psychedelic Mode: %d\n"
00081c1c  "Extra Time!!!\n"

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Outro

For previous articles on cheat code archaeology, see my archive.

Many thanks to Stefan Posthuma for participating! I’m glad that he got a kick out of seeing this ancient secret after so many years.

Which other 3DO games should I be looking at? Let me know!

Logo credit: Ashlyn Anstee