Under the microscope: ReBoot (PlayStation)

I come from the net.

It may not look like much now, but let me tell you — in 1994, the ReBoot TV show was impressive. I barely remember the story or the characters, but I definitely remember being wow-ed by the fact that it was entirely 3D CG animation. Watching it felt like living in the future.

A PlayStation game based on the show came out in 1998, and it’s the subject of this article. Cheat sites generally list six codes for it — here are the ones that GameFAQs has as of this writing:

But is that all of them? Let’s investigate…

---

Technical details

A look at the game code shows even more potential cheats. Here are some strings that are loaded into memory:

80010320 "Full Glitch\n"
80010330 "All Wpns\n"
8001033c "All Shield Pickups\n"
80010350 "Rainbow\n"
8001035c "Long Camera\n"
8001036c "Large Anim\n"
80010378 "Small Anim\n"
80061c6c "Dot\n"
80061c74 "Enzo\n"
80061c7c "Flying\n"
80061c84 "Replay\n"

Most of those match up with the cheat descriptions above. But Rainbow, Long Camera, Replay, Large Anim, and Small Anim don’t have associated button codes.

GameShark and Action Replay hackers know how to activate these effects — sites like GameHacking.org have them under their Cheat Modifier codes. The associated addresses are 80045ED0 and 80045ED2.

Tracing references to those addresses leads to the function at 8001355c. It compares your button presses at the main menu to the sequences in the array starting at at 80010384. If it finds a match, it increments one of the counters near 8004618c. The mapping of array values to buttons is the usual one for PlayStation games:

This gives us the heretofore undiscovered codes!

---

The Rainbow code

The buttons for the “Rainbow” effect are:

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

It makes the stages more colorful:

---

The Long Camera code

The buttons for the “Long Camera” effect are:

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

It gives you a top-down view of the action:

---

The Replay code

The buttons for the “Replay” effect are:

Down, Left, Up, Down, Right, L1, R1, Up, Right, Up

It’s more like a level select than a replay function. It gives you an extra option on the main menu that allows you to choose a level to play:

---

The Large Anim and Small Anim codes

The two codes change the size of the boss characters.

For “Large Anim,” enter this sequence:

Right, Left, Down, Right, Left, R1, L2, Down, Right, Down

For “Small Anim,” enter this one:

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

Left: Large Anim. Right: Small Anim

---

Outro

For more cheat code discoveries, see my archive.

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee