Dynamite Dux (Sega Master System)

One of many ports of Sega's arcade game Dynamite Dux, but the only one for a console.

Unlike some of the computer ports by another developer, there's nothing dirty to see here.

Sub-Pages#

Prototype Info Prerelease Info

Unused Graphics#

Title screen letters#

Letters for a Continue/Start menu on the title screen, stored uncompressed at 03984 in the ROM (between enemy code, nowhere near other graphics). The actual title screen graphics at 1E19A are compressed and contain "©", "SEGA", "19" and "8YPUHTABRONIC>", for "Push Start button" and a Continue/Retry menu.

Main font leftovers#

The game's text only uses 8x8 digits and most of the alphabet, but its font is a near duplicate of American Baseball / Reggie Jackson Baseball (by the same developer), only missing a few more tiles:

Dynamite Dux	Reggie Jackson Baseball

Sega logo#

This is actually shown before the title screen when a Japanese console is detected, but the game was never released in Japan so this would never be seen.

Lucy's standing pose#

In the intro/ending cutscenes, Lucy only uses a bouncing jump pose before/after being trapped in a bubble, but does also have a standing pose (the bottom 2x2 tiles) that could have fit between jumps (as was done in the arcade version) but ended up unused.

Bin's human form's tall legs#

Used in the cutscenes, but the bottom half of his legs is covered by background tiles so he appears shorter than he is.

Flamethrower#

Weapon type 4 (other guns are 1 2 3 5) is an unused flamethrower, which existed in the arcade version but hasn't been fully implemented here. Spawning one does show it properly and gives it 50 ammo, but it shoots rocket projectiles instead and the flame projectile doesn't exist.

Setting 3C007=04 in ROM will change Round 1's first weapon pickup to this type, so it can be seen in game.

Jenonimo's "after shooting" pose#

This is coded to appear on the same frame a shot is spawned, but then immediately changes back to the walk animation.

4 lives#

You start with 2 lives (+ last life at 0) and can gain a single extra life at 150000 points, but there's graphics for "4" left unused. Even if you were to cheat your way to more lives, the display will only loop 0-3.

Large hotdog#

There are 6 types of food drops (burger, cake and hotdog in 2 sizes each), the large hotdog is never dropped but fully functional.

Setting 3C01F=0D in ROM will change Round 1's first food drop (7th Bow) to this type.

Unused Text#

What looks like developer comments between parts of enemy code, in plain ASCII.

Unused Screens#

Runkig#

RAM C03E specifies the current game mode (reset, title, demo, gameplay), but there's an unused 5th mode, which can be seen by setting C03E=04 and C03F=00.

It shows a black screen with "RUNKIG", plays Round 1's music, then waits up to 512 frames for button 1 or 2 pressed on Player 2. If pressed, it jumps to gameplay, else returns to title screen in a somewhat broken way, since its code ends with a call and no ret so it runs some unintended code first.

Sega logo#

As mentioned under unused graphics, this is shown before the title screen when a Japanese console is detected (in other regions, the BIOS already shows a Sega logo first so this would be redundant), but the game was never released in Japan.

Leftover data#

Empty space at the end of each bank is filled with unrelated data, from the same address ranges in World Games (also by the same developer) for the first 128k and unknown for the rest.

FM Soundtrack#

Like several other games for Master System around this time, this game contains code and data for FM but wasn't released in Japan where the FM sound expansion was available. Even on a Japanese console with FM, it is never enabled.

It can be enabled by locking RAM D000 to a non-zero value to activate FM code, and setting ROM 3D56A=F2 (or writing to I/O port F2) to enable FM sound.

All of the music data is shared with PSG (only with different headers for channels), while most of the sound effects aren't.

Soundtrack comparison (NTSC):

References#