Under the microscope: Sega Rally 2 (Dreamcast)

Unlock everything, everywhere, all at once

Sega Rally 2 is a sequel to and an expansion of Sega Rally. It originally appeared as a Model 3 arcade game, and was then ported to Dreamcast and PC.

The Dreamcast version has several cheat codes that have been known since at least the year 2000. But at least one is missing: the “all years” code doesn’t work for the NTSC-U and PAL versions.

In this edition, we’re going to find it — and another one!

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Technical details: locating the codes

To review, these are the currently-known codes. All are entered at the title screen.

• Unlock all cars:

  • NTSC-U / PAL: Up, Up, Down, A, A, R, B, B, Down

  • NTSC-J: Up, Down, Up, B, A, Left, B, B, Down

• Unlock all years:

  • NTSC-J: Up, Left, Down, Right, B, A, B, Right, Down

• 30 fps mode:

  • All versions: Up, A, Down, Down, Left, Right, B, B, Down

• 60 fps mode:

  • All versions: Up, A, Down, Down, Left, Right, B, B, Up

My goal was to locate these to see where they are processed.

Using the usual memory snapshot diff technique (Cheat Engine works for this), you can find that the game stores input like this:

0001 0000: R

0002 0000: Up
0004 0000: Down
0008 0000: Left
0010 0000: Right

0100 0000: A
0200 0000: B
0800 0000: X
1000 0000: Y

8000 0000: L

Searching for one of the known sequences leads us to this region of memory (this is from TITLE.DLL on the disc).

Lucky for us, all of the codes are right next to each other. We can just read them off! That leads us to…

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The new codes

The first sequence of buttons is longer than the rest. Its buttons are:

NTSC-U / PAL: Up, Right, Down, Left, L, R, X, X, Y, Y, B, B, A, A

What does it do? It unlocks everything! That is, it makes all of the cars available, and marks all of the 10 year championships as complete.

Here is the NTSC-J equivalent:

NTSC-J: Up, Right, Down, Left, L, R, X, Y, B, A, X, Y, B, A

Racing an unlockable car on an unlockable track

The missing “all tracks” code for the NTSC-U and PAL versions is in the list as well. Here it is, after all these years:

Down, Down, Up, B, B, L, A, A, B

Unlike the “everything” code, this one shows the year tracks in silver rather than gold.

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Outro

As always, you are welcome and encouraged to use the information and screenshots on this page on your favorite reference sites.

For more coverage of new cheat codes for old games, see my archive here at Substack. You can also subscribe to get new articles as I write them:

I’ll be back next week with some cool things for some Saturn and PlayStation games.

Logo by Ashlyn Anstee