Disaster Report is the predecessor to Raw Danger, and the first game in the Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series (絶体絶命都市, literally "The Desperated City").
The game deals with the characters' survival and escape from the slow collapse of an artificial island. While dodging falling buildings and debris from periodic earthquakes, the player must find a way off the island. In addition, the main character, a reporter, must investigate the reasons for the disaster.
Easy Difficulty#
Under normal circumstances, players can only choose Normal or Hard difficulty. However, by setting the address 2025C2C8 to 0000, saving, and reloading, the game will now be set to Easy and the save's difficulty listing will reflect this. The save/load/checkpoint memory value for difficulty is located at 204052C0.
The only difference between Easy and Normal is that Easy allows the player to hold 20 Quench Points (QP) instead of Normal's 10, complete with a second QP row on the HUD.
Easy difficulty is seen in an example of a save on a save screen in the game's instruction booklet, and there are several gameplay screenshots where two QP bars can be seen. Along with the save having the "Easy" marker, it is saved at the location "Airport Island", which does not seem to be an actual gameplay area.
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Easy |
Normal |
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Unused Items#
Karen's Letter#
Can be found placed in an out-of-bounds area of the Patrick James Park map. It is treated by the game as a note (with a title of "Rescue Team Note"), and reading it shows "It's a letter from Karen." before going into the letter itself:
Keith, Thank you for helping me when I needed it. I feel safe when we are together.
It's a pleasure being with you.
I hope we'll be rescued soon. Karen
Sewage Water#
(Japanese name: "下水".)
An unused water variant that, upon consumption, decreases player HP and QP by 50%.
Stage Select#
In the North American version, players can warp to the level information loaded in at memory addresses 2036BBB0, 2036BBB8, and 2036BBC0 by setting the value at 2036BC00 to 1.
Additionally, if 20380710 is set to 1 before warping, players are greeted with a Japanese warning screen which loosely translates to the following:
Because this is under development, you cannot play the stage at this time.
To continue, please play the next stage.
Thank you.
Press the ◯ button to proceed to the next stage.
This screen was likely used in a demo at some point.
Japanese Tutorial Video Leftovers#
On the discs for the North American and European versions are four tutorial videos from the Japanese version.
Regional Differences#
While many characters have black hair in the Japanese version, these characters' hair colors were changed to blonde in the international versions in an attempt to appeal to a western audience, even though these characters still have an Asian appearance as their models remain untouched.
The European release is the only version to contain an accessible Easy difficulty.
The Japanese version supports the hard disk drive to reduce load times.
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The Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series | |
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PlayStation 2 |
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