Tiny Toon Adventures

Tiny Toon Adventures is a platformer based on the cartoon of the same name, with gameplay literally taken from Super Mario Bros. 3.

Sub-Page#

Prerelease Info

Stage Select and Invulnerability#

All versions of the game feature a simple stage select cheat, accessed by pressing A (×3), B (×3), Select (×3), A, Start at the title screen. Choose a level by pressing Up or Down, then press Start.

The Japanese version features a second cheat (Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, Right, Down, Left, B, A, Select, Select, Select, Start) which displays a version of the screen with an additional "Player No Damage" option, which can be toggled by pressing Select. This latter option is disabled in the US and European versions, but can be enabled with Game Genie code OESGKTPA (US) or OAXKVYPA (Europe).

Build Dates#

Present at the end of the PRG ROM:

MAST910809

MAST means it's the "master" version, and the numbers represent the date (which is the same in all versions) - in this case, August 9, 1991.

Unused Graphics#

What appears to be a set of teeth, found in the same sprite bank as the chandeliers of Stage 6. These were likely meant for a trap similar to one in the final stage of the sequel.

What's left of an unknown enemy. The sprites can be found in the background graphics bank of Stage 4-3. The graphics bank of this enemy was probably repurposed into a background graphics bank.

Two unknown blocks, found in the graphics bank of Stage 1-3.

Unknown pillar graphics, found in the graphics bank of Stage 1-3.

Present in the graphics bank for the backgrounds of Stage 2-3 (pirate ship) are tiles for a cannon.

A reconstruction of the cannon. May not be 100% accurate.

Unused background graphics for Stage 5. Probably a reference to "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali, as the clock(?) seems to be hanging from a tree branch.

Unused slope tiles found in Stage 5's graphics bank. They look like early or alternate graphics for the ramps in the second section of the stage.

Unused Music#

To do: The following fix also re-enables the sound effects in the following music tracks. A better fix is needed.

While the following two tracks are used in the game, a bug in the sound driver mutes the noise channel, resulting in some of the drums not playing at all. Opening the ROM in a hex editor, going to address $18043, and replacing the bytes C9 BE F0 E6 C9 CA F0 E2 with EA seems to fix it.

Life Loss ($BE)#

There's a single drum that should play before the song ends.

Boss Defeated ($CA)#

This music track features a lot of percussion that unsurprisingly goes missing.

The reason as to why the percussion is missing in those tracks is most likely because when one of them are playing, the sound driver attempts to mute any sound effect. This has the unintended side effect of muting the noise channel as well, because the noise channel's percussion instruments are treated as sound effect entries.

Anti-Piracy#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: The US version doesn't seem to have the anti-piracy routine, which (unfortunately) becomes the base of the many pirated versions.

As with most games Konami published after 1990, the Japanese version of this game features a copy-protection routine.

At the start of the game, the partial CHR ROM checksum is calculated to ensure its consistency (for CHR banks $38-$3B, sum total of four 256-byte blocks at $0000, $0500, $0B80, and $0D00, which contain the graphics for the Konami logo and fonts for the copyright string), and a flag is clear if there's a consistency failure.

If the flag is clear, completing Level 3-3 will cause the game to loop back to the first level. However, if the flag is still set at the time of the final check (CHR test has passed or skipped), there is an additional summing of the first protection routine code in the PRG ROM. If this test is passed as well, then the program will continue its normal operation or else do a loop back to the first level as well.

Regional Differences#

US	Europe

The Konami logo was redrawn for the European release.

US	Japan/Europe

Plucky appears miscolored in the ending if you defeat the final boss as him. His sprite was edited (removing the outline) and recolored to fix this for the Japanese and European releases.

References#