i have unraveled how part of this game's cheating works. to explain, briefly:
- BDA5 is a subroutine containing only an RTS, with a lot of unreferenced code after it. XVZLSS will remove the return and enable the full routine.
- the highest bit of the first dipswitch value will enable the cheat flags.
- with the high bit set, toggling one of dipsw2's bits on and off, as well as one of dipsw3's bits, will trigger a cheat function:
-- dip sw 2 -- only enabled with dipsw1 high bit + rom patch -- "XVZLSS" (BDA5:EA) -- to use, toggle bit on and off -- -- 7 forces hi/lo game to win. toggling more will add more wins. -- after the amount of wins, the next game is a 100% loss. -- 6 [?] block always awards double. -- 5 (unknown) -- 4 [?] block always awards triple (green mushroom) -- 3 Force square type 1 (one of the "three group" symbols) -- 2 Force square type 2 (melon/coin/star/seven) -- 1 Force square type 3 (melon/coin/star/melon) -- 0 Force square type 4 (bar) -- with dip sw 1 high bit + patch, -- dip sw 3 / joypad 2 start will force a hi/lo loss
notably, there is no way to toggle dipsw2 normally.
the mr. hyde part of the game is still mysterious, but i'm getting closer to understanding it.
