Under the microscope: Stunt GP & Jet X2O (PlayStation 2)
Two unrelated games, two very similar cheat codes
In Monday’s article, I described several Easter eggs in Saturn games that can be activated by entering special player names. For today’s article, I’m covering something similar: name-based cheat codes for a couple of PlayStation 2 racing games.
Stunt GP (Team17, 2001) has an “unlock everything” cheat that has managed to stay hidden for the last 25 years.
Jet X2O (Killer Game, 2002) also has a previously-undocumented “unlock everything” cheat.
Details are below…
Stunt GP
The PS2 version of this RC car racing game from the makers of the Worms games has a hidden secret:
Navigate to 1 Player > Time Trial in the menu.
Enter your name as
SGP, then immediately press Triangle to go back to the name entry screen.Enter your name as
NOW, then press Triangle to go back again.
If you got it right, you'll be prompted to save your progress. You can leave Time Trial mode after that.
All vehicles will be unlocked. The Team Specials vehicle category has some interesting cars:
All tracks will also be unlocked:
Technical details: This game has debug symbols! They’re viewable in the PCSX2 emulator's debugger.
One of the symbols is for the function at 002711ac, which is named feUnlockEverything. Its only caller is the Update_TimeTrial function, has logic that looks like this:
if (UnlockCount == 0) and (player_name == 'SGP'):
UnlockCount = 1
elif (UnlockCount == 1) and (player_name == 'NOW'):
feUnlockEverything()That is, putting your name in as SGP increments a counter from 0 to 1. Putting your name in again as NOW causes the game to check that counter. If it’s at 1, then the master unlock function executes.
Jet X2O
Jet X2O, a wave racing game from Killer Game, also has a special "unlock everything" cheat that uses the name entry screen.
Start a new World Tour event from the main menu. Create a New Player File, and then enter your name as Unlock. You get get capital letters by holding L1 or R1.
You’ll then be able to select all of riders and customize them with their different wetsuits:
You’ll also be able to select all of the water craft and customize them with decals:
The higher difficulty levels will also be available to on the venue selection screen:
Technical details: This game has debug symbols, too. There's a function labeled UnlockAll at 00134868. It’s called by another function called RiderSelect_SlideOut. That function has logic like this:
compare_result = strcmp(player_name_01, "Unlock")
if compare_result == 0:
UnlockAll()So the code is calling the standard strcmp function on your player name and the string Unlock. If there’s a match, the UnlockAll function runs.
Outro
Annoyingly, an analog to the “unlock everything” code exists on the Dreamcast version of Stunt GP. But there’s no way to activate it from the game! The special name checks aren’t programmed in. You can manually unlock everything by setting the 4 byte value at 8c1f75d0 to 1, however.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with more Rings of Saturn this week.
