Sword Master (NES)

Sword Master is a game in which you master a sword, probably. It's notable for some very impressive multi-layer parallax scrolling, an effect typically not seen in NES games.

Bit Reversal#

This game's samples are corrupted by the 2A03's bit reversal bug. For more information, click here.

Debug Leftovers#

BANK6 of every version of the game contains a large amount of debug code and related text. While most of the related programming is still present, most of the JMP and JSR instructions no longer point to valid addresses, meaning the functionality was scrapped at some point before release. Even worse, the beginning of the bank should contain portions of code used by some debug routines, but it has been almost completely replaced with copies of data from elsewhere in the ROM for unknown reasons.

At offset 0xC812:

FLAG   = 01   U:D
STYL   = 00   L:R
BANK   = 40   SEL:START
COLOR  = 00   FIRE:WARP
SCR ADDR = 2000
    CODE = 20
MAP X = 0200
    Y = 0000
TEST DATA 0 1 2 3
TEST DATA 5 6 7 8

At offset 0xCD60:

HIT DATA CHECK
H OFF =
H LIM =
V OFF =
V LIM =
REV H =
M FLAG=
M STYL=
T FLAG=
T STYL=

At offset 0x9010:

ENEMY MOVE CHECK
ENE FLAG =

Unused Copyright Graphics#

Sword Master good at sword, but not so good at spelling.

All the tiles necessary to render an Athena copyright and Nintendo licensing information are present in the international versions' title screen graphics bank. Presumably this would have been displayed below the logo, much like it was in the Japanese version, as demonstrated in the above mockup. (Note that the associated tilemap data was completely removed from the ROM, so the positioning may not be 100% correct.)

There are a few of oddities in this version of the copyright info:

Nintendo is spelled as "Nintndo".
The only numbers present are 1 and 9, which implies a copyright year of 1991, a little closer to the game's actual release date. This was changed to 1990 in both the US and European versions for some reason.
There are only enough stand-alone letters to spell "ATHENA" and "PUSH START", which may imply that either the game was going to be self-published, or the publisher logo screen did not originally have the Athena copyright.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Regional Differences#

Title Screen#

Japan	International

The font was greatly simplified and the copyright information was moved to a separate screen in the international versions.

Copyright Screen#

USA	Europe

The tilemap was edited to remove "of America" in the European version, though the relevant graphics are still present in the CHR ROM. Note that the copyright year was still not updated to reflect when the game was actually published.

Credits#

The programmer, CRAZY TOM, was renamed STOOGE TOM in the international versions.