Aurail is a half top-down, half quasi-3D mech based shooting game developed by Westone and published by Sega. It's fun but a bit difficult to play (or more likely I just suck at it), and there's a debug/cheat lurking just beneath the surface of the code...

I cut my teeth on game hacking and research in the Sonic communities of the early 2000's - Area 51, SSRG, CulT - and the Sonic arcade games were always something of an enigma to us. It's been especially exciting to see that these rarities have been finally dumped, including Cosmo Fighter.

I opened the data not expecting to find much and, unfortunately, I was correct. But there are a couple interesting tidbits worth looking at...

In which we take a look at the House of the Dead cheats and how they can be used to load model data from unused characters.

Looks like I can finally cross "discovered a previously unknown debug code in a Sonic game" off my bucket list.

One of the most loved games by fans of the legendary Neo-Geo has a boatload of debug tools and a hidden mini game...

A cute falling blocks style puzzle game with a spellcasting twist and a surprisingly detailed CPU Player debugging tool.