The Famicom/NES Steins;Gate was released as a bonus with the Switch version of Steins;Gate: Elite. It's not bad, and has a surprisingly good soundtrack.
The bonus is an NES ROM packaged in a fancy emulator, resulting in the game circulating online soon after its release. It also plays quite well on real hardware.
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Unused Graphics#
Stored near the ending graphics is a graphic featuring all the main characters of the series, originating from the trial version of the series' previous retro-style adventure game spinoff, Steins;Gate: Henikuukan no Octet (aka Steins;Gate 8-bit). It lacks an associated palette.
Its presence right next to the final ending graphics would suggest it was supposed to show up during the ending. The game instead cycles through the areas the player has traversed, ending with a graphic of Makise Kurisu.
Unused Audio#
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An odd sound effect which sounds similar to the cursor selection sound, but extended with what sounds like other sound effects.
An incomplete arrangement of "Skyclad Observer", from the PC game of the same name. This was likely used for the credits, or the title screen. However, a completed version exists which adds the missing vocals. Interestingly, the conclusion for the missing channels can be drawn due to the complete version using the MMC5 expansion sound, while the "instrumental" version uses MMC3 (which lacks sound).
Oddities#
Save Data#
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The game generates an 8KB save file on most flashcarts and emulators (including Steins;Gate: Elite's own emulator), which is mostly empty except for a small amount of data. The game also prints "steins" at the beginning of the file.
This is odd since the game lacks a save system of any kind.
Other Remnants#
Certain ROMs of the game, when loaded into Famicom Disk System development tools (such as the Sunsoft Tile Editor), will provide the file names of each CHR/PRG bank. Paired with the unused song's missing channels, it seems that the game changed mappers through development, going from FDS to MMC5 to MMC3.
Text Box Shaking#
When played on real hardware or more accurate emulators, the game's textbox will jitter every time a song's sampled drums are played. This is not a problem on the software side, but rather the hardware side: the MMC3 IRQs that are timed to split the screen are occasionally delayed due to the DMC DMA stealing CPU cycles, thus delaying the IRQ.
This hardware bug never occurs on Steins;Gate: Elite's own emulator, thus the visual oddity is absent there.
References#
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The Science Adventure series | |
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NES |
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Windows |
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PlayStation Portable |
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