Atlantis no Nazo

Atlantis no Nazo (アトランチスの謎) is the kind of platformer game that lacks creative level design but makes up for it with terrible jumping physics, extremely limited time, insta-kill enemies, leaps of faith, and one hundred mind-numbing levels of hell. All by the same company that made Batman. The mind boggles.

The game was localized and bugfixed by Activision several years later and slated for release as Super Pitfall II, but was&mdash;for better or for worse&mdash;eventually cancelled. Fortunately, a prototype cartridge was found and dumped for everyone to...enjoy.

Debug codes
There are a few debug codes that were used by the developers. All codes should be entered at the title screen. The routine that checks these button codes is located at in the ROM file (or  in NES memory). There are internal counters for the Select and A buttons on controller 2, and B on controller 1. Every time you press one of these buttons, one of internal counters increases, regardless of which button is pressed first or second. When a group of counters reaches the desired amount, the final test performs on combined value of pressed buttons from both controllers. The program doesn't care which controller you use for the final combination, you can do any buttons on any controllers you want, just press and hold them all at the same time. Note, when you press the final combination, internal counters continue to increase, so if you press one of the "counted" buttons as part of the final combination after counters are reached desired values, your cheat won't trigger. So you must not use them in the final combination at all and use any other free buttons, or combine last counted pressing with final buttons held.

Level skip
Counters condition: the Select button on controller 2 - 33 times, the A on controller 2 - 22 times. Final combination: A + B.

Press Start to start new game. During game press Select to go to the next level.

Unfortunately, this code will send you to all of the levels in order regardless of which level you're on and won't loop around, so if you miss the level you're trying to get to, you have to start over.

This can also be activated by setting to, and controlled by setting  to the level number minus 1.

Infinite lives
Counter condition: the A button on controller 2 - 11 times, the B button on controller 1 - 22 times. Final combination: not needed.

Press Start to start new game.

This can also be activated by setting to.

Invincibility
Counter condition: the B button on controller 1 - 33 times. Final combination: A + B + Select + Up + Down.

Press Start to start new game.

It will only last for 255 lives, and your bombs will still kill you. (It actually gives you the invincibility item.)

This can also be activated by setting to.

Unused "dark enemy" effect
There is unused code in the game that causes enemies to turn black, except for their eyes/other notable features, and illuminates them when you throw a bomb. It was used in all of the dark levels, and was probably supposed to be another effect of the "flash bomb" item (which illuminates the background). Most of the enemy sprites seem to have been designed with this feature in mind, as they rarely use the eye color anywhere else. It can be enabled using Game Genie codes (to require the "flash bomb" item) or  (to always work in dark levels).

Alternate sprite-handling code
The game has an unused block of code that appears to be an old, broken sprite handling routine. Instead of using DMA to send the sprite list to the PPU, it writes them directly to the registers, one by one. Activating it and removing the DMA code causes a LOT of flickering and other glitches, although the game otherwise continues to run properly. (Game Genie codes .) Most of the glitches are caused by bad logic and leftover debugging code. The logic can be fixed, which makes it work in emulators, although there are still some glitches and it updates sprites less than half as fast as DMA. (Game Genie codes .)

Zone 42
Zone 42's effect flashes one of the palette colors red. None of the graphics displayed by the stage (unless going out of bounds) use this palette color. It's assumed the text in BLACK HOLE! would've flashed, however.

Zone 50
Zone 50 contains a closed, hidden door embedded in a wall near the start of the area, which leads to Zone 59. Since it's impossible to reach with a bomb, the door cannot be opened. It was probably meant to be open, requiring you to kill yourself in order to access it.

Zone 120
Zone 120 cannot be accessed without hacking the game, and contains 7 items -- the maximum normally allowed in any level is 4. There is no level layout data or doors. The seven items are, in order from left to right: Score-Up, Microphone, Invincibilty, 2x Points, Score-Up, 2x Points, and Super Bombs.

The general consensus is that these items were assigned to actual levels at some point during development, but were later deemed unnecessary and repointed to level ID, effectively "deleting" them from the game. A few of them do seem to fit into certain levels rather nicely.

Inaccessible Zones
Several zones exist that cannot be accessed without using the level-select warp.

There is a large image showing these levels and the doors leading to/from them. They are described in more detail below.

Zone 59
Zone 59 cannot be accessed. It was originally intended to be accessed from Zone 50, but a possible typo prevents access. It has 4 chests of little value and 3 doors; the left door, from Zone 50, leads to the right side of Zone 26; the middle door is invisible and leads to Zone 55; and the rightmost door leads to Zone 69.

Zone 55
Zone 55 can only be accessed from Zone 59, and as that zone is not accessible this zone cannot be reached in the normal game either. It's a small zone that contains a chest worth 200,000 points, a microphone powerup, and one door that leads back to Zone 59.

Zone 69
Zone 69 is accessible in the normal game through several doors. However, the door that Zone 59 dumps you out of leads to itself, so it's impossible to access Zone 59 again once you enter the door leading to this zone.

Unused graphics
There are some unused objects in the game's graphics data. These were presumably replacements for the diamond in the Final Zone. However, only the vase and coin appear in the same bank as the ending objects.