There are two unused songs, but their purpose here is not clear. All songs can be heard at the Select-A-Data Screen using Pro Action Replay code C02B79?? (where "??" is one of the below). All songs have looped/non-looping versions, and subtracting or adding 40 from the current song's value will play them. Earlier versions of both of these songs are found unused in Tamori no Picross.
Use Pro Action Replay code 7E119C0E or ROM address C021B20E at the title screen. Songs 07 and 0B are unused. Pressing Up or Down will toggle between BGM/SF. Left or Right will select the song/sfx number, A plays music and B or X will play the currently selected sound effect. Y will restart the song.
Song number 19 is the last song before silence or crashing the APU.
Use Pro Action Replay code 7E119C0F or ROM address C021B20F at the title screen. All progress will be lost if you choose to erase. Not used, however; individual save files can be erased in-game by pressing A + B + Select on the highlighted file.
At boot, the game will zero out 0x7efd70 through 0x7efd73. It will verify these addresses are empty four times at 0x26d24. Depending on whether or not the addresses are empty, a section of one of the above strings will be printed to 0x8 in RAM. Under normal circumstances, the second message will appear. This is likely a boot sequence verification method.
The game has been saved.
You will continue from where
you left off.
There's a leftover save screen from a version ofTamori no Picross. This message pops up after saving in the middle of a picross puzzle. In this version, a message from either Mario or Wario is displayed instead. Changing 0xB577 to 4C 08 34 will replace the tutorial with this screen instead.
The game checks to see that it has exactly 8KB of SRAM on boot, by writing two bytes of values at 0xB07FF0 then comparing with the values at 0xB17FF0 to verify the SRAM mirror is in the correct location. If this check fails due to a mismatch, the game boots up to the above screen and hangs. Cartridge copiers tend to have a lot more than 8KB of SRAM to support a wider variety of games, so they will trip the anti-piracy detection.
Use Game Genie code DD5E-3AD7 to boot to the anti-piracy screen.
Attempting to play the game with a European SNES throws up this error screen upon booting. Nintendo planned to release Super Picross internationally, but scrapped them due to poor reception from Mario's Picross, making this screen appear a bit awkward. Notice that "game pak" is misspelled as "game pack."
When the game boots up, it creates two save files with the maker code, game code, and game title from the internal header. If there's a mismatch between the first save file and the rom, the save file is wiped. The string "Noriaki Teramoto", the name of the main programmer, is also stored in each save file. Strangely, the game does not perform the aforementioned validation on this string.
This type of sanity checking would prevent another game's save file from being loaded. However, it seems a bit superfluous considering the game already performs checksum checking. Also, game codes are adjusted per region, so this would also prevent different save files from different regions from being loaded, had they been developed.
The Super Famicom version of this puzzle has multiple solutions, but the game recognizes only one solution. This was fixed in the rereleases by adding a single pixel between Wario's left eye and his nose.
