The Blue Marlin

Bugs

Music#

Sound Test#

Hold Select + Start, then press Reset.

Unused Music#

Tracks 14 and 17 in the sound test are unused in the game. 14 sounds like a short victory jingle and 17 is an action-packed loop.

Unused Events#

Event $0A#

There are 14 events that may occur during the reeling sequences. The most common are "SHOOT! THE HOOK CAME OUT" (number $0E), "GO FOR IT!" (number $0D) and "THE LINE'S REELING OUT!" (nmber $07). The rest are semi-random fishing events involving Marlin jumping, walking, Shark biting, etc. Some of thse are very rare.

One of the events, "THE ROD IS BROKEN" (event number $0A), is never assigned to any part of the game and thus never called. However, the switch case still exists in the scripts. To see it, when the game writes an event number in RAM at $5C4, write $0A there instead.

Unreferenced Event#

Another unused event is totally unreferenced in scripts and can be seen only using the Game Genie codes NKNVLIVO+XONVGSNA, which replaces the "SHOOT! THE HOOK CAME OUT" event with this one. This event also mentions the broken equipment: "WHAT? THE REEL DOESN'T WORK!?", so it's possible they were cut out to reduce the difficulty.

Hidden Text#

Soft Reset Check#

The string "MEGUMI.MY.LOVE" appears in the ROM at offset 0x1E0E1 (not including the iNES header). While not seen in-game, this string is used as a RAM check to determine if the game has been soft-reset (with the Reset button) or hard-reset (by turning the power off and on again), likely used for the sound test.¹

It's worth noting that very similar messages appeared in several Hudson Soft games written by Kikuta Masaaki, such as Star Soldier, though whether he had any involvement with this game is currently unknown.

Info Strings#

Two small strings found at 0x1EAF1 (US version) were likely used at the development stage as a debug event. It has the wrong spelling of "MARLIN" as well.

MARIN WEIGHT
MARIN HP TYPE

Footer#

A version number and a title string can also be found in the footer at 0x1FFF0 (both versions). Both are part of the special ROM header used by some hardware (like FamicomBox) to autodetect the game's name, mapper, and size. This title string contains a typo of "MARINE" where it should be "MARLIN":

BLUE MARINE Ver1

Regional Differences#

Opening Cutscene#

'...But what does it mean?' This game has text or audio that needs to be translated. If you are fluent with this language, please read our translation guidelines and then submit a translation!

Japan	US

Title Screen#

Japan	US

Password Screen#

Japan	US

The US version has the vowels and number 0 omitted, but has ever so slightly longer passwords to compensate.

Event Graphics#

Japan	US

In the US version, a somewhat gruesome image of a fish vomiting up its own stomach(!) in the "Go for it!" event was, of course, censored. The CHR graphics for the stomach are still present, however. All they did was remove the object insertion from the script. The event text was also rewritten to compensate; now the fish just gets tired.

References#