Gex: Enter the Gecko (Game Boy Color)

Remember Gex? That gecko that jumped into TVs to defeat a robotic psycho bent on taking over television? Well, this is like the second game, but smaller and harder to figure out!

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Notes

Options Menu#

During development, there was an additional menu option between the "START" and "PASSWORD" options. It looks similar to the options menu in the PlayStation version. There are neither tiles in the graphics data of the title menu, nor script entries to handle this option, nor even a text string inside the game scripts with that menu item name. So, we don't know if it was really called "OPTIONS" or maybe "SOUND". However, the branch to this menu item just was modified to an impossible value 90 instead of 20 (the "START" option is 10, the "PASSWORD" option is 30, so we know for sure it was in the middle).

Use the Game Genie code 302-09B-A28 to replace the "PASSWORD" option with the disabled one. Now, at the title menu, you can enter this hidden option by selecting the "PASSWORD" item. Unfortunately, sound can't be affected with this menu. It's just a dummy menu.

Unused Strings#

Actually, there are unused text strings around 0x5ccf that shows some interesting stuff:

Around 0x5ccf there's text for "START", "SOUND" and "PASSWORD", but the text is not triggered on the menu because it uses graphics instead of text.

At 0x5efd there's more text that looks unused: 0x5f42 has "ROCKET CHANNEL" as text, but there's none of their levels in-game (remains of cut levels?). Also at 0x5f71 shows "SECRET STATION".

Even though some levels were designed to have 1 or 2 remotes (be it Red or Golden) to be collected, there's place before each text string of each level to show the level title AND 3 tips on getting the remote. But let's jump to the offsets of the cut levels: 0x615f, 0x62fa, 0x63b4, 0x63fd, 0x6409, 0x6415, 0x6421, 0x65a7, 0x65b3, 0x65bf; each accompanying of 8 subsequent bytes pointing out to blank text (indicated as "80", that works like a line break).

Unused Graphics#

Gex climbing up from a wall. For some reason, these aren't used even if Gex does get up to a platform after climbing.

Gex can't lick flies while jumping, rendering this unused.

The same case above goes for tail bouncing.

Version Differences#

Game Boy	Game Boy (w/ Pause Bug)	Game Boy Color/Super Game Boy

The background fades to black when Gex dies in Game Boy mode. This doesn't happen on other consoles. However, if one were to pause and unpause in Game Boy mode, the background returns to normal.

Game Boy	Game Boy Color/Super Game Boy

Every time the screen changes in Game Boy mode, the screen fades to white. This is removed on other consoles.

Game Boy	Game Boy Color/Super Game Boy

On the Game Boy mode, the game displays the level name below the TV screen. On Game Boy Color and Super Game Boy, no names are displayed.