A remake of Glodia's hit 1989 home computer RPG, the PC-Engine CD version of Emerald Dragon is a much-polished but overall largely faithful port of the original game, featuring totally redone graphics, a new soundtrack, lots of flashy new cutscenes and voice acting, and far more forgiving gameplay. Despite some token efforts, however, the game still doesn't actually have much to do with dragons.
A Super Famicom port of the game, derived from this version but substantially "remixing" the plot and gameplay, was also released the following year.
Debug Mode#
The game contains a fairly extensive debug mode which, unlike in the Super Famicom version, is not normally accessible. It's activated by setting bit 7 of the RAM at CPU address $2086. For example, immediately after starting a new game, this address will contain 0x2B; to activate debug mode with no other side effects, change it to 0xAB.
On retail hardware, there is no way to enable this mode. However, the game actually performs a number of tests while booting up to check for certain conditions that presumably indicate the presence of development hardware. If any of them succeed, the game will set bit 7 of $2020, a separate debug flag which enables the Visual Selector and also causes this mode to be enabled when a new game is started.
If the game is saved with this debug mode on, the debug flag will be saved to the Backup RAM as part of the game's global configuration data, meaning it will remain activated permanently.
Debug Menu#
The debug menu is opened by holding Run, then pressing Select. Note that Select+Run is also the soft reset code, so make sure not to trigger that by accident.
- WARP: Opens a menu with a list of locations to warp to. This includes several debug maps: デバッグ村 (Debug Village), 赤Ｐ村 (Aka-P Village), ＹＡＳ村 (YAS Village), and ＹＡＳ村２ (YAS Village 2).
- VIEW: Opens the map for the current area. This can always be used even in areas where the normal map option is disabled, and is always scrollable.
- LVL: Causes Atrushan and Tamrin (if she's in the party) to both gain a level.
- GOLD: Increases total Pulse. The amount given appears to be a percentage of the current total; having no money means this will do nothing.
- ITEM: Opens a menu with a list of all the items in the game. Selecting one will attempt to place it into Atrushan's inventory. If his inventory is already full, this will do nothing (the game will not check other party members for empty slots).
- PATH: Set to OFF to enable walk-through-walls.
- ENTRY: Set to OFF to disable the ability to use doorways.
- MASK: If set to ON, the normally-invisible sprite masks which are used to make parts of the background show in front of the sprite layer are drawn in black. This feature would have been used to make sure that the masks' shapes properly matched the background graphics.
- ENCNT: Set to OFF to disable random encounters.
- (NON): Dummy option that does nothing and can't be changed.
- ATRB: Unknown effect. The three question marks can be selected and toggled to A, B, and C respectively.
- VISUAL: Set to OFF to prevent cutscenes from playing.
- NA: Set to OFF to disable ADPCM speech.
Other Effects#
Enabling debug mode has various additional effects:
- Holding Button I while moving on the overworld will increase Atrushan's movement speed.
- Selecting 逃げる (escape) while in battle brings up a menu asking whether to win (勝利), lose (敗走), or flee (逃走), with each option triggering the corresponding outcome to the battle.
- A test menu is enabled on the bootup load game menu (which is itself accessed by holding Button II while the game is starting). Pressing Button II will bring up a menu with options to UNFORMAT (which clears the enture Backup RAM as though it were uninitialized) and FILL FILES (which writes a large number of files named TEST to the Backup RAM).
- Cutscenes can be skipped by pressing Run.
Visual Selector#
The game contains a cutscene player and partial sound test which would have been accessed by holding Down as it booted. However, the game specifically disables checking for this unless it has detected the presence of development hardware as described above. To re-enable this check, overwrite the three bytes at 0x206B in an ISO rip of track 2 with EA EA EA.
Toy Show Demo#
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Resource block 15 contains a demo map derived from an early version of the Urvan/Eirvad overworld region. It can be accessed by using the Warp option on the debug menu to go to the Debug Village, then bumping into the NPC immediately above and to the right of the entrance.
An NPC found on the Hill of Prayer helpfully explains this map's existence:
...これって本当はおもちゃショー
に出す予定だった部分だけど、ボツになっ
たの。
だから作りかけのまま終ったと\n
言うわけThis part was actually planned to be shown at the Toy Show, but it got scrapped. So, it's been left half-completed.
The "Toy Show" referred to is most likely the Tokyo Toy Show 1993, held in June the year before the game's release.
Comments made by NPCs on the map indicate that players would have been given a five-minute time limit to explore the overworld. Various comical events were specially implemented for the demo: Urvan's elder and his butler get their "scripts" mixed up and say each other's lines by accident, Barsom finds a doll of himself that's been carelessly left lying around at the bar and orders a "stagehand" to put it back in storage, etc.
In addition, the dialogue that wasn't overwritten for the demo (mostly text tied to later parts of the game) usually contains early versions of the script, and will appear as intended if the appropriate plot flags are set.
Unused Scenes#
Two of the scenes in the Visual Selector are placeholders for planned cutscenes that were never implemented:
GAR_VISUAL#
がるしあびじある
garsia visual (note that "visual" is misspelled)
This would presumably have been some sort of cutscene featuring Garsia, one of the game's main antagonists, perhaps as a lead-in to fighting him. In the finished game, his only appearance in a visual scene is a brief shot in the intro.
TIL_VISUAL#
てりだですびじある
tiridates visual (both words are misspelled)
Like the above, this would have been a cutscene featuring final boss Tiridates.
Unused Items#
チケットTicket
In the original game, the Ticket was an item was needed to use the ferry between Parsee and Little Kasha Island. It was removed from this version, but the item itself still exists.
Unused Text#
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System Text#
見知らぬ人Unknown person
A placeholder used to fill in the name of the nonexistent party member with index 0.
ジェシルJeciel
Jeciel, a non-playable character who makes brief appearances late in the game, has an entry in the game's internal list of party members, indicating he was considered for inclusion as a proper party member.
の書Book of
This is a text fragment which would have been combined with other strings to form a longer name. It's unclear what it might have been used for.
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These are located with the text for the options menu and seem to relate to various settings that don't exist in this game. They're most likely leftovers from some previous Alfa System title.
止まるWait
This additional text speed setting existed in the demo version of the game, but was removed in the final.
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This appears to be a list of one-character status effects and other labels for indicating a party member's state/action. These aren't used; a somewhat similar but separate list is actually used for this purpose. Possibly another leftover from some other Alfa System game.
Removed Events#
Some events from the original home computer versions of the game were removed or replaced in this version, but the associated text was nonetheless ported over and can still be found in the script:
- In the original version, the levers at the top of Castle Druguant were part of a "puzzle" where the player had to choose the correct lever to open the gate to the next area. Choosing the wrong lever would result in the player being attacked by enemies or, more egregiously, releasing "poison gas," causing an instant game over that required the system to be reset. This little trap was wisely removed from this port.
- The raid on Fort Zalma near the start of the game originally had a different scenario where Parago disguises himself as a prisoner, requiring the player to sort-of solve a very half-baked logic puzzle to determine which of the prisoners is actually him (his cell for some reason has no bed, thus "proving" that he couldn't actually have been staying there). This was replaced with a more straightforward sequence where the player simply has to find Parago in a deep part of the fortress.
Leftover Data#
Similarly to Tengai Makyou, unused areas of the disc have been filled in with other content from the hard drive used to develop the game. For instance, beginning around 0x3E3530 in a 2048-bytes-per-sector ISO rip of track 2 is leftover English text from the US version of Ys Book I & II (also developed by Alfa System). Fragments of uncompiled SJIS-formatted scripts for IV, the game's event handling system, can also be found in various places, such as 0x626800.
Revisional Differences#
A second revision of the game is known to exist. The full differences are unclear, but it fixes at least one bug: in the original release, starting the slot machine minigame with 100-199 Pulse on hand will cause the player's money to underflow to a huge number. This was corrected in the later revision.