Under the microscope: Super Runabout — San Francisco Edition

ELVIS!!! lives, sort of.

Apr 05, 2025

If you go to GameFAQs and look up Super Runabout, you’ll see only one cheat code listed, and it’s marked as working only on the Japanese version of the game:

What gives? Did the developers remove this cheat for the international releases? I decided to investigate.

Good news: The cheat does exist in the NTSC-U and PAL versions (which are called Super Runabout: San Francisco Edition). And even better news: there are some more cheats that have stayed hidden for 25 years. Here’s the definitive list:

See below for details, plus some non-cheat Easter eggs!

Unlock cheats

The equivalent of the ELVIS!!! code for the NTSC-U version is SURFSUP!. It unlocks all missions:

And all cars in both scenarios:

You can also unlock all cars with GET32CAR on the NTSC-U and PAL versions. It’s CAR32GET on the NTSC-J version.

Entering your name as KANNAITO (Climax Entertainment’s founder) gives you the XSR car on the thieves side. NeoSeeker already knew about this cheat, which works on the NTSC-J version also.

On the police side, the name ROCKET!! unlocks the BIM car in the NTSC-U version. This is MENBLACK in the NTSC-J version:

The “Piggie” car can be unlocked on the thieves side with the code PIGGIEBK on the NTSC-U version. It’s PIGBUTA! on the NTSC-J version:

The Dynamics cheat

Enter your name as DYNAMICS to get physics information printed on the screen while you’re driving:

The meters are:

Tire load
G-Meter
YawMoment

Name Easter eggs

When doing reverse engineering, it’s good to have a starting place — a piece of code that does something that you understand. That’s why I search memory snapshots for naughty words. Since many games have forbid certain strings from appearing on the high score screen, it’s a good bet that finding a list with XXX and SEX will lead you to a sanitizing function.

The Super Runabout games won’t let you put in SEX; you get SFX instead:

This game was a Dreamcast exclusive, so we can’t have people talking about the rival consoles — PS and N64 get replaced with DC.

Nor should we allow those other system’s makers to be advertised! SONY and NINTENDO get replaced with SEGA.

Technical details

This is a Windows CE game, which cuts two ways. On the good side, you can just load the SUPERRA.EXE file into Ghidra it will analyze it very thoroughly for you On the bad side, you won’t have a memory snapshot with real pointers to guide you.

After fumbling around for a while, I found that the Japanese version of the game stores its ELVIS!!! cheat like this:

000f3b44 4500 0000  # "E"
000f3b48 4c00 0000  # "L"
000f3b4c 5600 0000  # "V"
000f3b50 4900 0000  # "I"
000f3b54 5300 0000  # "S"
000f3b58 2100 0000  # "!"
000f3b5c 2100 0000  # "!"
000f3b60 2100 0000  # "!"

That is, as ASCII, but with three 0 bytes after each letter. Annoying, because you can’t just search for the string!

That gets referenced by the function at 00098f94, which thankfully checks all the special names listed above and applies cheat effects and name substitutions.

Outro

Feel free to post these codes on your favorite website. Spread the word!

For another look at a Climax Entertainment game, see my article on Dark Savior. For many more cheat code discovery articles, see my archive.

As always, tell me in the comments which other games I should be examining. I’ve got working setups for 3DO, Saturn, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2, and GameCube so far.