Under the microscope: Wipeout Pure & Wipeout Pulse (PSP)

Congratulations! You have unlocked: EVERYTHING

There were two titles in the Wipeout series released for the PSP. The first one, 2005’s Wipeout Pure, was a launch title for the system in North America.

The second one, Wipeout Pulse, followed two years later in 2007.

According to the the Wipeout Fandom wiki, these are the first two games in the series to not have any cheat codes to unlock extra classes or tracks¹. Can that be right? Let’s check…

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Wipeout Pure

Let’s start with Wipeout Pure. Enter this sequence at the Main Menu screen:

Left, Right, Left, L, R, L, Right, Left, Right, R, L, R

If you got it right, you’ll see this Congratulations! You have unlocked everything screen:

“Everything” includes all the of the leagues:

And all of the tracks:

And all of the teams:

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Wipeout Pulse

Surprise: this game uses the exact same code to unlock everything. Enter it on the Main Menu screen:

Left, Right, Left, L, R, L, Right, Left, Right, R, L, R

You’ll get the strangely redundant Congratulations! You have unlocked: You have unlocked everything! message:

All of the grids will be unlocked:

And all of the race campaigns:

And all of the alternate ship skins:

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Technical details

There’s a very helpful string loaded into the game’s memory (address from the original NTSC-U version of Wipeout Pure):

08a75b14 "Show Unlock All"

That’s referenced by the function at 08948870. That’s got a section that looks like this (pseudo-Python adapted from Ghidra’s decompilation):

target_button = code_buttons[counter]
if check_input(target_button):
    counter += 1

if code_buttons[counter] == -1:
    change_screens("Show Unlock All")

The code_buttons array is at 08aabeec. The mapping of numbers to buttons is particular to this game:

08aabeec 0200 0000 # Left
08aabef0 0300 0000 # Right
08aabef4 0200 0000 # Left
08aabef8 0800 0000 # L1

08aabefc 0900 0000 # R1
08aabf00 0800 0000 # L1
08aabf04 0300 0000 # Right
08aabf08 0200 0000 # Left

08aabf0c 0300 0000 # Right
08aabf10 0900 0000 # R1
08aabf14 0800 0000 # L1
08aabf18 0900 0000 # R1

The process of finding the cheat code is identical for Wipeout Pulse.

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Outro

Wipeout Pulse is technically outside of my 20 year window for retro games on this blog, but since its cheat is identical to Pure’s, I’ll let it slide.

Which other PSP games should I be examining? It’s great — the games are cheap to acquire and the available debugging tools are excellent.

For more cheat code discoveries, see the archive.

1. There are codes to access the downloadable “Secret Packs” in the Wipeout Pure, though — see the Wiki for details.