Battle of the Eras

Battle of the Eras
Developer: Procryon Platform: DOS Released in US: 1995 This game has unused playable characters. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has unused text.

Battle of the Eras is the genuine result of some neighborhood kids getting together to try and make a commercial game. While the end result doesn't make for a good fighting game, is notably buggy (with several unintentional methods of closing the game, slow menus, and an insane amount of input buffering done on every screen), and managed to sell exactly zero units (resulting in it being the first and last game released by Procryon), it does have all the charm of being an effortful kids' project.

To do: The game has two executable files, battle.exe and beras.exe, with slightly different file sizes. Are there any major differences?

Unused Character

PROTO is a secret character, though only semi-unused, as he can be fought in Arcade mode by pressing Space before the first match begins. He is also selectable in Versus mode, but only by Player 2, and even then the game will crash before the match loads due to missing sound files.

When fought in Arcade mode, he uses sounds normally reserved for the Minotaur.

Unused Graphics

DAT1.DAT and DAT2.DAT are actually GIF files and are never used by the game.

This portrait of ShadowSnake can be found in GFX\SHADOW.

This unused screen showing a DNA sample can be found in GFX\MISC\DNA.PIC.

Unused Music

To do: Is S2.DKM corrupted due to decay in the diskettes used to store the game?

S2.DKM

A theme meant to play when a character's ending is displayed. Due to file corruption, the game will crash upon attempting to load this. This is a reconstruction from splicing instrument data and pattern data onto another working DKM file. The file name of the original song labels this track "VICTORY!"

Proto Stage

An unused pattern in PROTO's stage music. It's a duplicate of another pattern that has less instruments used and also a slower tempo.

XLX-2250 Stage

Two unused patterns in XLX-2250's stage music. These are numbered before the used patterns, a strange omission considering that most of the game's soundtrack has incredibly long intro segments for stage themes overall.

Unused Text

To do: How do these codes work, and what does each do?

 TIMEWILLTELLBUTWHOWILLTELLTIME?
 WHYIFEELLIKECHEATINGTODAY!
 PATIENCECOMESTOTHOSEWHOWAIT...
 BUTWILLANYONELETME?!ITHINKNOT!
 DON'TBEGREEDYREMEMBERTHAT

A series of strings in the game's executable. If either beras.exe or battle.exe are launched with the switch -t and one of the above messages afterwards, it displays the first message from the following set:

 If you're gonna cheat, do it right!
 You bloody cheater!!!
 I told ya not to be greedy!

Debug Text

 Fighter %d
 Specialmove = %d
 curraction = %d
 method = %d
 currmove = %d
 sflag[0] = %d
 sflag[1] = %d
 sflag[2] = %d
 sflag[3] = %d
 sflag[4] = %d
 isinmove = %d
 isingettinghit = %d
 isdizzy = %d
 reverse = %d
 isupdated = %d
 ticks = %ld
 x = %d
 y = %d

 SPECIALMOVES
 CURRMOVE
 curframe = %d
 frames = %d
 direction = %d
 reverse = %d
 animmethod = %d
 loopflag = %d
 currmovestatus = %d

 CURRACTION
 curframe = %d
 frames = %d
 reverse = %d
 animmethod = %d
 direction = %d
 loopflag = %d
 curractionstatus = %d
 curframe = %d
 frames = %d
 direction = %d
 loopflag = %d
 F[curframe].size = %d
 F[curframe].width = %d
 F[curframe].dataoffs = %d
 width = %d
 height = %d
 XMSPtr = %s

A set of messages, obviously related to tracking current fighter status.

 Not a supported fighter.

 this fighter is not meant to finish the game

Found in different places in battle.exe and beras.exe.