Dragon Hopper is an action-adventure game where you play as the dragon prince Dorin, who has to save his girlfriend Diana from the corrupt prime minister Lexer.
The game was first shown off at Space World 1995, but the Virtual Boy would be discontinued in Japan at the end of the year. Nonetheless, Nintendo of America planned to release it alongside Bound High! and Zero Racers as part of a system relaunch in '96, only for all three to be shelved (despite being complete and rated by the ESRB) in favor of simply discontinuing the system entirely.
Dragon Hopper would finally see release 30 years later via Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics app for Nintendo Switch, albeit marketed outside of Japan as D-Hopper due to the trademark for "Dragon Hopper" having been claimed by Push Gaming Product Limited in March 2024. The original name remains present in-game, though.
Debug Features#
Stage Select ("Secret Options" Cheat)#
Press L-Right, R-Left, L-Up, R-Down, L-Left, R-Right, L-Down, R-Up, Select, Start at the title screen. The menu includes a bonus round select, an easy mode, and the ability to unlock all magic.
This stage select menu seems to be a cleaned-up version of the full debug menu which Nintendo found acceptable to offer to general players as an accessible cheat code. It pulls its level list from a separate smaller list that uses the in-game stage numbering instead of the actual internal values (see the Oddities section).
- STAGE SELECT: Select between Stage 0-1 to Stage 6-8 with L-Left/L-Right, then press A to access the selected stage.
- BONUS STAGE: Select between FLAP FLAP and JUMP JUMP bonus stages, then press A to play the bonus stage. You'll go back to the Secret Options menu after playing.
- EASY MODE: OFF by default. Setting it to ON seems to be doubling your damage to enemies.
- ALL MAGIC: OFF by default. Setting it to ON will include all magic spells in the magic select menu.
- MUSIC SELECT: OFF by default. Setting it to ON will unlock the Sound Test menu.
Sound Test#
In the "Secret Options" screen, the sound test can be enabled. It can then be accessed from the title screen under the options menu, where a "MUSIC" option will be added, giving you access to a music player.
Debug Menu#
A more in-depth debug mode can be enabled by changing (0x31D44) in the ROM to 0x01. You can the press Start+Select in-game to bring up the debug menu anytime.
The accessible debug menu features include:
- STAGE: A stage select with more rooms not found in the "Secret Options" menu, including room interiors and shops. Select the stage with with L-Left/L-Right, then confirm with Start. The player will be warped to that room with 100 star coins and the fairy enabled.
- DINO TYPE: A dragon form change/unlock option, used with L-Up/L-Down. The option refers to the titular character as a dinosaur here, but the choices call it a dragon, suggesting a possible different origin story for the D-Hopper name.
- SOUND MODE: Will disable sound and BGM. Re-enabling it doesn't seem to work. Used with R-Up/R-Down.
- MAGIC TYPE: A magic change/unlock option, used with R-Left/R-Right.
- Various background and CHR RAM viewers accessible with L, R, and Select.
There's further text in the ROM for features not accessible in this iteration of the debug menu, alongside various placeholder strings.
- RECORD, PLAY: Would be used with Start and Select in a different menu. Possibly related to the auto-play gameplay in the attract mode.
- MF EDIT MODE: Possibly related to a map editor.
STAGE SELECT
STAGE
START KEY RECORD
SELECT KEY PLAY
DEBUG MENU
DINO TYPE
SOUND MODE
MAGIC TYPE
L,R STAGE SELECT
U,D MAGIC SELECT
L2,R2 DINO TYPE SELECT
U2,D2 SOUND MODE SELECT
RT PUT BG MAP 7
LT PUT CHR RAM
SELECT PUT BG MAP 8
START GAME START
0
MF EDIT MODE
RIDE NUMBER
MF NUMBER
X
Y
Z
WORK0
WORK1
WORK2
WORK3
WORK4
WORK5
WORK6
WORK7Debug Info#
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To do: |
While the debug mode is active, the title screen will display build info, with some minor corruption. The final ROM seems to be dated May 28.
Pressing R-Up repeatedly in-game will toggle in succession different information overlays titled "Game Information", "Game Timer", "System Message", and "System Timer". Unlike the debug menu cheat, it works in most screens, but it will occasionally conflict with the game's graphic loading and update routines and cause some garbage tiles to appear, usually fixed by toggling the menu off.
These seem to give general information about the current game state, as well as hardware resource usage. In particular, it will give detailed information about the room and the current player position, playtime, and clear rate.
Unused Rooms#
Room 9-5#
Room 9-5, also called "Stage 9-e Underground Cavern" (internal name) or "Stage 9-5 (DEBUG)" (debug menu's stage select), is an unused room with no exits and no objects. It has a simple staircase with three platforms, and is identical to other used rooms that hold keys or bonus coins. Internally, it's stored right after the four spirit cells. It can be accessed via the debug menu.
Bonus Room Duplicates#
The debug menu includes duplicate versions of the "Flap Flap" and "Jump Jump" minigame rooms. Unlike in normal gameplay or the "Secret Options" minigame test, they can be explored like regular maps, and the floor can be walked on all the way to the otherwise rarely seen room boundaries. There's no way to exit the rooms.
Unused Text#
The game uses Shift-JIS encoding for most of its in-game messages in English, Japanese (Kana), and Japanese (Kanji). However, there's also some developer messages buried in the ROM that also use Shift-JIS but include characters not present in the in-game font table (0x1C3CCA), suggesting they were never meant to be displayed in-game.
Internal Game Name#
Present at 0xC0C14 (ASCII), just after the Debug Menu text and a "VERSION" string.
D-HopperAs noted above, this name would see use by Nintendo in marketing materials for the game's 2026 release due to trademark issues.
Developer Message#
Present at 0x1D7F7C (Shift-JIS). Notably, the message postdates E3 '96, which had a playable showcase of the English version of the game.
Line breaks have been added below as a best guess based on the ASCII art border in the message.
========================================
プログラムは超ダサダサです。開発期間が無かったのと、その他いろいろありまして。
いやぁ、おはずかしい。(^^;次回またあう機会がありましたらよろしく。
by manchan (Wed May 22 07:40:13 1996)
========================================Translated:
The program is super lame. We didn't have enough time to develop it, and there were a bunch of other issues too.
Man, I'm so embarrassed. (^^; If we have a chance to meet again, I look forward to seeing you then.
by manchan (Wed May 22 07:40:13 1996)(Source: Anonymous 4chan /vr/ user)
Level Data Headers#
The game stores its room data starting from 0x1B4EB0. Conveniently, the developers added to the file headers the level names alongside a short description in Japanese that roughly match their final Japanese names with some exceptions. Some room numbers are skipped or moved around (see the Oddities section).
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English |
Translated |
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Oddities#
Cut Worlds#
While the game has a tutorial world and six playable worlds, the internal room IDs for the stages skip worlds 5 and 7. This suggests that the game would have had 8 main worlds instead of 6. The two planned late-game worlds would have been placed after Cirrus (World 4), called "The world of clouds" (雲の世界) in the English cutscenes and the Japanese name.
The in-game playthrough, as well as the Secret Options menu, hides this aspect by renumbering the last two worlds. On the other hand, the Debug Menu, the Debug Views, and the internal level headers all use the internal numbers.
The "Secret Options" menu goes as far as to store a second smaller list in addition to the actual internal stage select feature from the complete debug menu, to account for the numbering differences. Due to this, the "Secret Options" stage select caps at Stage 6-8, while the "Debug Menu" stage select equivalent is Stage 8-10 and then some more rooms for the shops and interiors consolidated under "Stage 9".