Under the microscope: Soviet Strike (Saturn, PlayStation)
Stop the war before it begins
Electronic Arts famously refused to release games for Sega’s Dreamcast, but people often forget that the company put out dozens of Saturn games. One of those Saturn games was Soviet Strike, a helicopter shooting game that also appeared on the PlayStation.
I’m going to crack the password system for both versions below and come up with some new cheats. Beware, though: using them might spoil your fun. As the manual says: FOR THE MAXIMUM CHALLENGE, REFRAIN FROM READING ANY FURTHER.
The Saturn version
Before you start a game, you have the opportunity to put in a password:
Some passwords change your starting level. Those are all known — they are MAROZ, KRAZHA, VERBLUD, YADRO, and PERIWOROT.
Other passwords give you a cheat effect. Several of these are known — FREEBIE gives you an extra attempt, TITANIC gives you unlimited armor, COLDPIZZA gives you unlimited fuel, etc. These appeared in magazines and online back in the 90s.
Some investigation revealed that some valid passwords remain unknown, however. There’s a list of obfuscated values stored at 06067e88 in the Saturn’s memory. When you put in a password, the game scrambles it, and then checks whether the scrambled value appears in its list. If it does, some bits in the flag field at 060686d4 get set.
The scrambling process is pretty simple. This Python code will reverse it:
def descramble(x):
return bytes((b ^ 0x0C) - 0x3C for b in x[:10]).decode()Applying the descramble function yields several new passwords! The full list of passwords and effects is below in the appendix.
The first new one is ZEN, which disables all weapons. You can’t attack, but neither can enemies. You can fly around peacefully.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is LOSALAMOS, which gives you unlimited ammunition. Whenever one of your weapons runs out, it will magically be refilled.
DEJAVU gives you unlimited attempts. If you’re shot down, you’ll respawn without having lost a life.
SUNRAYCER gives you unlimited fuel. This duplicates the COLDPIZZA password’s effect.
NEVERSTOP gives you unlimited ammunition, fuel, and attempts.
TOOFARGONE gives you unlimited ammunition, fuel, and attempts. It also gives you the “weapons powerup” effect of the previously-known GABRIEL password.
The flag associated with the password WILLIAMTELL gets read when you’re shooting at enemies. I think it might improve your aim? The effect wasn’t totally clear to me — leave a comment if it is to you.
The PlayStation version
The PlayStation version’s password screen looks the same as the Saturn one on the surface:
But underneath it works a bit differently. Instead of scrambling your input and then checking it against a scrambled list, it unscrambles each list item and then checks it against your input.
The scrambling algorithm matches, however, and the reversal code above yields 23 passwords. Five of them are the level passwords, all of which have been known since the 90s. Most of the other 18 are also known, but I think these two are new:
MANTARGET: Same as
WILLIAMTELLon Saturn.GUMMYOCTOP: Unlimited fuel. Duplicate of the already-known
EARTHFIRST.
The full list of passwords and effects is below in the appendix.
Outro
I’ll cover the sequel to this game, Nuclear Strike, in a future edition. So if you’re a fan of helicopter games, stay tuned.
For other articles about new cheat codes for old games, see my archive.
Appendix
All of the Saturn passwords. For the effects data, type 0 sets the number of lives; type 1 sets chea tflags; and type 2 sets the starting level.
| Password | Effect data |
|------------|-----------------------------------------------|
| MAROZ | (2, 0x0) |
| KRAZHA | (2, 0x1) |
| VERBLUD | (2, 0x2) |
| YADRO | (2, 0x3) |
| PERIWOROT | (2, 0x4) |
| ZEN | (1, 0x40) |
| FREEBIE | (0, 0x4) |
| VOODOO | (0, 0x7) |
| GABRIEL | (1, 0x80) |
| ALBATROSS | (1, 0x100) |
| LOSALAMOS | (1, 0x2) |
| TITANIC | (1, 0x1) |
| DEJAVU | (1, 0x4) |
| WILLIAMTEL | (1, 0x400) |
| ADRENALINE | (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x4) |
| TOOFARGONE | (1, 0x80), (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x4) |
| SUNRAYCER | (1, 0x8) |
| COLDPIZZA | (1, 0x8) |
| NEVERSTOP | (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x1) |All of the PlayStation passwords:
| Password | Effect data |
|------------|-----------------------------------------------|
| WORSTCASE | (2, 0x0) |
| GRANDTHEFT | (2, 0x1) |
| GROZNEY | (2, 0x2) |
| CHERNOBYL | (2, 0x3) |
| CIVILWAR | (2, 0x4) |
| QUAKER | (1, 0x40) |
| SADISSA | (0, 0x4) |
| NOSFERATU | (0, 0x7) |
| DRBENWAY | (1, 0x80) |
| VULTURE | (1, 0x100) |
| STRANGELUV | (1, 0x2) |
| IAMWOMAN | (1, 0x1) |
| EARTHFIRST | (1, 0x8) |
| ELVISLIVES | (1, 0x4) |
| DAVEDITHER | (1, 0x200) |
| MANTARGET | (1, 0x400) |
| FUGAZI | (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x4) |
| THEBIGBOYS | (1, 0x80), (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x4) |
| MOUNTANDEW | (1, 0x8) |
| GUMMYOCTOP | (1, 0x8) |
| GHANDI | (1, 0x800), (1, 0x40) |
| ANGRYLOCAL | (1, 0x800) |
| MIDNIGHOIL | (1, 0x2), (1, 0x8), (1, 0x1) |