Treasure Master

Treasure Master was part of a contest run by MTV, in which players were given a password that set off a 24-hour race through the entire game - including an extra world - in order to try and win cash prizes, sports/concert fantasy event packages, or SNES consoles, though it could be played separate from the contest as well.

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Notes

Unused Graphics#

Stored alongside the inventory screen graphics is clear evidence of a failed sponsorship deal: the Pizza Hut logo! The palette here is just a guess.

Unused Text#

Several Software Creations games (Sky Shark, Target Renegade, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, Pictionary, Terminator 2) had their empty space padded with copyright/credits text, rather than 00 or FF as most other games did.

Treasure Master contains the following text:

TREASURE THINGYS.
COPYRIGHT 1990 SOFTWARE CREATIONS LTD.
! PROGRAMMER   STEPHEN RUDDY.
! ARTIST   CRAIG HOUSTON.
! MUSICIAN   TIM FOLLIN.
! SOFTWARE CREATIONS LTD.
 FIRST FLOOR      204 OXFORD ROAD
  MANCHESTER      M1 5QA
  GREAT BRITAIN
  TEL 061 236 1154
  FAX 061 236 8248
     WIGAN RUGBY LEAGUE FOOTBALL CLUB

Note that there are no actual line feed symbols in the text; each line is a fixed length, padded with spaces.

Cheat Protection#

Since there were real-life prizes associated with this game, including a rather large cash one, the programmers added some code to check for cheat devices (such as the Game Genie) at startup. These devices run their own code before handing control over to the attached game, and thus end up leaving telltale signs in the system's RAM and VRAM. If the game detects any of this leftover data, it locks up with a gray screen.

Additionally, the game checks for the serial number buffer consistency with a simple checksum as well as controls the PROM's data consistency, performing the random PROM bank checksum test (each bank contains the checksum word at $BFF8-$BFF9 for the area $8000-$BFF7, which is compared with the calculated checksum) while switching the areas. If the PROM bank checksum is wrong, the game won't show you the "Congratulations" or "Warp" screens; it will immediately switch to the next stage instead. The only critical effect of this protection is that you can't play the prize level properly because it won't initialize the rollercoaster variables, and so they will fly from and to random or incorrect locations, and you just can't advance to the next screen.

It was probably planned to be more destructive during development and protect from any device that can modify the PROM values or from hacking, but the end result is too weak: The PROM bank select is random-based, meaning that it can test any bank at the moment of level completion, and if the tested bank is fine and unmodified the game will act normally (showing the "Warp" screen and correctly initializing the rollercoaster data).

Second Prize Level#

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A second prize level is present in the game, but the password to access it was never released to the public. American Softworks had most likely planned for there to be multiple contests centered around the game, though only one ever happened.

Currently, the only known way to access it without glitches is through a custom FCEUX save state, as producing a valid password that decrypts the secret level handler requires very complex reverse-engineering work (see the Notes page for the full gory details).