I seem to be running into this a lot lately, where standard test mode options are disabled or missing from test menus. Honestly, while it’s always gratifying to dig out unused code and make it dance, these finds are kind of boring. But at least this game has some hidden developer credits. Those are always interesting!

Oh, you disabled your debugging options in the test mode menu? We’ll see about that…

Oh man, I am EXCITED! Pocket Fighter was one of the first games I tried picking at when I started hacking old arcade games around the end of last year. I could clearly see from the raw dump alone that there was something hidden away here (it doesn’t get more blatant than a string reading “SECRET TEST”). I tweeted when I found the the entry routine early on, but I could never quite coax the game into loading it properly. Until now…*suspenseful music*

I want to believe…

I’m still alive! It’s the busy season at work, so between that and working on other projects, I haven’t been doing much digital archaeology research. Tonight I spent some time doing just that.

So! Dark Seal 2 (known as Wizard Fire in the west) is a fantasy themed beat-em-up. And apparently it has a variety of debug functions remaining…