Cadash (Arcade)

Cadash
Developer: Taito Publisher: Taito Platform: Arcade (Asuka hardware) Released internationally: 1990 Released in JP: March 1990 Released in US: April 1990 This game has unused graphics. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prototype article This game has a notes page

Oh dear, I do believe I have the vapors. This page contains content that is not safe for work or other locations with the potential for personal embarrassment. Such as: A variety of colorful terms for the genitals and related terms en japonais. Also, topless mermaid.

An early attempt at a platform RPG with some very nice graphics for its time. The cabinets could also be networked, allowing for up to four players at once.

Sub-Pages

Prototype Info

Notes

Debug Mode

After booting the game, hold the service switch and reset the game. Afterward, a service SW error screen should appear. At this point, press Start x 3, Service, then Start, and the game should proceed as normal. After inserting credits and selecting your character(s), you will then be greeted with a level select. You can see a level number and scroll layer position info.

After selecting a level, you can then choose the amount of gold, the amount of experience, and which key items to start off with for each player.

Special & Forbidden Names

...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!

...But does it make sense? The translations on this page need to be proofread. If you are fluent enough in this language, please make any corrections necessary!

The Japanese sets have an extensive (for the time) list of banned names. Trying to enter any of these names will replace them with a more innocuous string. While most of these are sexual terms, there are a few outliers:

Name		Replacement
おめこ＿	Vagina	キミこい	Love you
うんこ＿	Poop	くいたい	Want to eat
いんぽ＿	Impotence	かわいそ	Pitiable
＿いんぽ	Impotence	あわれ	Pitiful
＿おめこ	Vagina	おこめ	Husked rice
＿うんこ	Poop	なにもの	Who are you?
おなにい	Masturbation	はやいっ	Fast
そうろう	Premature ejaculation	やすいっ	Easy
ほうけい	Phimosis	すてきっ	Splendid
いんもう	Pubic hair	けけけっ	Ke ke keee
ぼつき＿	Erection	ポッキー	Pocky
The game warps the original bokki to the similar-sounding pocky.
ぺにす＿	Penis	ハヤイ！	Fast!
ちんげ＿	Pubes	！！！！	!!!!
ざあめん	Semen	のみたい	Want to drink
ばぎな＿	Vagina	なにそれ	What's that?
まんこ＿	Pussy	ＸＸＸ	XXX
ちんぽ＿	Dick	チイサイ	Small
たいとう	Taito	タイトー	Taito
The replacement name spells Taito in the proper katakana instead of hiragana.
ちゆうか	Chinese (food)	イカス！	Cool!
＿ばぎな	Vagina	おっかぁ	Ma
＿まんこ	Pussy	かあさん	Mom
＿ちんぽ	Dick	ガキ！	Brat!
おまんこ	Pussy	なるほど	I see.
ふあつく	Fuck	ジーザス	Jesus
あむしや	Amsha	アムシャ	Amsha
Amsha is the name of the jelly-like protagonist of the 1989 game Plotting.
ほりちん	Hori-chin	たらばー	Tarabar
Both names reference the main programmer, Tarabar Hori.
きんたま	Balls	おこさま	Child.
ふとまら	Big penis	グレート	Great
ちんちん	Wee wee	わんわん	Doggy
Game plays on the original chinchin with the replacement wanwan.
せつくす	Sex	するお
ふたなり	Futanari	まままっ	Well well well
でかまら	Big dick	かてる！	Win!
すぺるま	Sperm	ピュッ！	Splurt!
せんずり	Jacking off	スリラー	Thriller
ちんぽこ	Weenie	ぽんぽこ	(Drumming)
Another play on words - chinpoko vs. ponpoko.
ぽこちん	Wiener	かぁん	Claang
らわがす	Rawagasu	ぜっとォ	Z~
Rawagasu is a syllabic reversal of (Toru) Sugawara, the Director of Software.
きんだん	Forbidden	ぜっとォ	Z~
てんちよ	Shopkeeper	ズルイ！	No fair!
ああああ	AAAA	プロコ	Proco
まままま	Mamamama	テアット	Tiat
Proco and Tiat are the playable characters in Darius.
かい＿＿	Kai	くのいち	Kunoichi
ぎる＿＿	Gil	にんじゃ	Ninja
Gil and Kai are the playable characters in Namco's The Return of Ishtar, while Ninja and Kunoichi are the playable characters in Taito's The Ninja Warriors. (Research: TepidSnake)

(Source: Taito Memories)

Strangely, non-Japanese versions don't have any filters at all. Even the old Taito standby of changing the name "SEX" to something like "H !" is missing.

Four of these names will change the name and appearance of the Black Pudding at the end of Round 1, but they have to be entered by 2P:

アムシャプディング Amsha Pudding	サンダープディング Thunder Pudding	じんめんそうプディング Human Face Boil Pudding
Enter the name あむしや for 2P	Enter the name らわがす or きんだん for 2P	Enter the name ほりちん for 2P

• Amsha Pudding is another reference to the Taito game Plotting.
• Thunder Pudding isn't a reference to anything, it's just a novel way to repurpose the sprites used in the Priest's Protect spell.
• Jinmensou Pudding is composed of a number of human heads. They are, from left to right:

• Yuichi Kohyama, listed as a monster programmer in the credits.
• Toru Sugawara, director of software.
• Seiichi Taikoshi, scenario programmer.
• Hiroshi Tsujino AKA Onijust, director, production designer, graphic designer, map editor, and game designer. Guy was busy.
• Hidehiro Fujiwara, software analyzer. Also directed Sagaia.
• Tarabar Hori, main programmer. Also programmed Gun & Frontier and Metal Black.
• Masaki Yagi, trap programmer.

(Source: 遙かなるガンフロンティア -堀崇真 立志伝- / ゲー夢エリア51)

These puddings are still in non-JP sets, but since the name checks were never changed they're normally inaccessible. Put the following codes in MAME's cadash.xml cheat file and activate one of 'em to change the Black Pudding into something else:

Amsha Pudding	Thunder Pudding	Jinmensou Pudding
<cheat desc="Amsha Pudding"> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.mb@2A5CA=67</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.mb@2A5CA=66</action> </script> </cheat>	<cheat desc="Thunder Pudding"> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.mb@2A5EA=67</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.mb@2A5EA=66</action> </script> </cheat>	<cheat desc="Jinmensou Pudding"> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.mb@2A60A=67</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.mb@2A60A=66</action> </script> </cheat>

While the puddings themselves were not changed, the text pointers for each pudding now point to the Kraken's intro text.

Cut Snow Round

Baarogue's arena has a somewhat out-of-place snowy floor with a muddled blue background. Those tiles and that background are all that was ever implemented of a scrapped winter-themed round that would have come in-between the Grove of the Gnomes and the Ruined Kingdom.

The first part would take place in a snowy village. This nice snow-capped house would have been an armory.

There are snow overlays for two other house types (Tools shop and residence), though they didn't seem to get as far as the armory.

There is one wholly unique art asset: This frozen-over wooden cart.

The majority of these tiles span from tile index 228C to 2700. The tiles seen here would have been used for the transition between the snowy overworld and the underground.

While this foreground is unused, the winter palette seen here is not.

The underground section of this round would have been made of solid ice with interlocking crystals walls. There are a variety of different crystal arrangements and sets of icicles hanging from the ceiling.

Of course, there's also a door graphic intermixed with the other tiles.

Even more icicle graphics. The set on the bottom would have been used in underwater sections.

This is the true appearance of the obscured background used in Baarogue's arena: A collection of crystals and packed ice.

There were three different tracks composed for this round, all of which were later repurposed:

OST Name	Intended Use	Actual Use
Footprints (Snow Scene)	Snow village	Mermaid scene
Where You Will Slide To (Ice Scene)	Ice dungeon	Bridge to Baarogue's castle
From Winter to Spring	(Unknown scene)	Final cutscene

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Shop Items

There are seven unused shop item icons in the game. The first, the elixir, is used in the prototype, while the other six are either key or secret items and aren't used in any version.

Put the following codes in MAME's cadash.xml or cadashj.xml cheat file to change the icon and purchase data of the medical berb in the first tools shop:

cadash

cadashj

<cheat desc="Replace Medical Herb Icon"> <parameter> <item value="0x77F6">Mystic Lamp</item> <item value="0x77F0">Amulet of Dragon</item> <item value="0x780E">Holy Gem</item> <item value="0x71FE">Elixir</item> <item value="0x77FC">Gold Key</item> <item value="0x7802">Gena's Charm</item> <item value="0x7808">Abel's Charm</item> </parameter> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.mw@38E46=param</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.mw@38E46=0x7204</action> </script> </cheat> <cheat desc="Replace Medical Herb Data"> <parameter> <item value="0x00050000">Mystic Lamp</item> <item value="0x00050001">Amulet of Dragon</item> <item value="0x00050002">Holy Gem</item> <item value="0x00050003">Elixir</item> <item value="0x00050019">Gold Key</item> <item value="0x0005001A">Gena's Charm</item> <item value="0x0005001B">Abel's Charm</item> </parameter> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.md@38E50=param</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.md@38E50=0x00060000</action> </script> </cheat>

<cheat desc="Replace Medical Herb Icon"> <parameter> <item value="0x7B3C">Mystic Lamp</item> <item value="0x7B36">Amulet of Dragon</item> <item value="0x7B54">Holy Gem</item> <item value="0x7544">Elixir</item> <item value="0x7B42">Gold Key</item> <item value="0x7B48">Gena's Charm</item> <item value="0x7B4E">Abel's Charm</item> </parameter> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.mw@3918C=param</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.mw@3918C=0x754A</action> </script> </cheat> <cheat desc="Replace Medical Herb Data"> <parameter> <item value="0x00050000">Mystic Lamp</item> <item value="0x00050001">Amulet of Dragon</item> <item value="0x00050002">Holy Gem</item> <item value="0x00050003">Elixir</item> <item value="0x00050019">Gold Key</item> <item value="0x0005001A">Gena's Charm</item> <item value="0x0005001B">Abel's Charm</item> </parameter> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.md@39196=param</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.md@39196=0x00060000</action> </script> </cheat>

These codes will not change the purchase price or description, but since there aren't descriptions for any of these items in either set it doesn't really matter.

Purchasing any of these items sets a flag that tells the game that they've been collected; this is used to prevent the player from purchasing a second one. However, the code that would handle the functionality of the Amulet of Dragon (Which should give the player gold) and the Holy Gem (Which should spawn a miniature version of the player that can attack enemies) doesn't exist in the purchasing subroutine, so buying them does nothing but set the flag.

There's one other unused shop icon: A bronze helmet for the Fighter class. Unlike the unused icons above, there's no tilemap for this icon, and the code and palette that would be needed to set up the bronze helmet as an item don't exist in the game's code.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Enemy Stats

There's an oversight with the way the game awards experience points: If the enemy doesn't drop any gold, it will skip past both the gold and experience point bonus subroutines. This effects the bats in Round 1, the giant frogs in Round 2, and the will-o'-wisps in Round 4, which are supposed to have base EXP yields of 2, 10, and 36 respectively. Place one of the following codes in either cadash.xml or cadashj.xml to fix this bug:

cadash	cadashj
<cheat desc="Fix EXP Bug"> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.mw@18FF0=0046</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.mw@18FF0=00B4</action> </script> </cheat>	<cheat desc="Fix EXP Bug"> <script state="run"> <action>maincpu.mw@195D2=0046</action> </script> <script state="off"> <action>maincpu.mw@195D2=00B4</action> </script> </cheat>

Other cases:

• The invulnerable porcupine enemies from Round 3 have a base gold drop of 9 and base experience yield of 6. Both values are much smaller than the other enemies in Round 3, which makes this even stranger.
• The Fire Elemental's body has a damage value of 98, but the player can't come in direct contact with it due to invisible barriers blocking entrance to the fire pits it spawns out of.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Graphics

Small versions of Baarouge's intro sprite. Could have been used for either an appearing or disappearing animation.

Five buttons and a bracket that take up sprite slots 12F to 134. Probably used for some developer tool which was removed from the game.

Four unused spell icons. The first spell would either give an AGI boost or let the player jump higher, the second might have revealed hidden item locations like the Mystic Lamp, and the third would make enemies fall asleep. As for the fourth spell, well...!?

Used
Alt

An alternate version of the Flying Daggers without the blue magic effect. This is placed right after the magical variant.

Early	Final

Three different money bag graphics - the bag's size would likely indicate its monetary worth. The palette is no longer in the ROM -- it doesn't use the palette that every other pickup uses -- but would probably look similar to the used money bag.

Early	Final

A single frame of an earlier, thinner Slime design.

A unique cycloptic rock monster that would spin around. No palette for this exists, but the graphics are referenced in sprite slots 00DE, 00DF, and 00E6.

A giant tornado foreground graphic which would take up most of the screen. No clue where this could have been used, though. Palette isn't in the ROM anymore.

It's a red curtain. Uses the same palette as the King's hair, so more than likely it would have been used in the castle somewhere.

A sprite-based version of the logs that make up the wooden bridges. Presumably, if the player stepped on one of these logs, it would flip and the player would fall through.

An ornate wooden pole with vines and a skull on the top. In the prototype, the mermaid was tied to this post during the Kraken fight. The programming and palette for this object were removed from the final game, and while a sprite for this post is defined at 0x4774E, it's not referenced in the sprite table or anywhere else in the code.

Early	Final

Older sprites of the mermaid, stored from CCC to CE2 in the object graphics ROM. The final versions of these sprites are in slots E1E to E30. The older sprites have differently shaded tails, and slightly larger breasts. To note are the different arm position, thinner hips, and visible nipples on the first sprite.

A smaller version of the ooze that those slime-spewing plants heave out. These take up sprite slots 01AC and 01AD.

There are skulls in Round 4's background, but they're never this close to the screen. The cross is also unused.

Three different sets of grabby hands for use in the underground section of Round 4. These would either hold the player in place or damage them.

A frame of the Reaper casting its Lightning Bolt spell. There's no tilemap for this in the ROM, so the Reaper enemy has to make due with only one sprite.

A single frame of a falling fireball. This is stored with the rest of the game's platforms and hazards (Spears, spike balls, boulders, etc.) and has a palette loaded in Round 4. It might have been meant for the long fire section before the underground village.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Version Differences

Text Differences Thank you for the important thing!

	cadashjo Japan 1	cadash World	cadashf France	cadashi Italy	cadashj1 Japan 2	cadashu1 US 1	cadashg Germany	cadashs Spain	cadashj Japan 3	cadashu US 2
Screen Flip Bug	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Projectile Bug	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Herbs & Antidotes	4 Max	8 Max	8 Max	8 Max	4 Max	4 Max	4 Max	4 Max	4 Max	4 Max
Herb Price	200	20	20	20	200	200	200	200	200	200
Inn Prices	Normal	Cheaper	Cheaper	Cheaper	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal
Heal 1	16 HP	16 HP	16 HP	16 HP	16 HP	16 HP	16 HP	16 HP	10 HP	10 HP
Protect	30 HP	50 HP	50 HP	50 HP	30 HP	30 HP	50 HP	50 HP	30 HP	30 HP
Recover	30 Sec	60 Sec	60 Sec	60 Sec	30 Sec	30 Sec	60 Sec	60 Sec	30 Sec	30 Sec
Amulet Worth	10,000	60,000	60,000	60,000	10,000	10,000	10,000	10,000	10,000	10,000
Round 3 Secret	Full	Empty	Empty	Empty	Full	Empty	Empty	Empty	Full	Empty
Boss Difficulty	Normal	Easier	Easier	Easier	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal

• cadashjo is the earliest known release.
• cadash is based off of cadashjo and is the first to feature several different difficulty adjustments.
• Both cadashf and cadashi are nearly identical to cadash, with the only changes being the different script and adjustments to the game's text handler to accommodate the extra characters each language needs.
• cadashj1 has a few code updates from cadash, but nothing that effects gameplay.
• cadashu1 is the earliest known US set and is based off of cadashj1.
• Both cadashg and cadashs are directly based off of cadashu1. Like the French and Italian sets, the only updates are to the script and the text handler.
• cadashj is the last known update for the Japanese set.
• cadashu contains the same code updates as cadashj.

Bug Fixes

Screen Flip Bug

Early	Final

In older sets, when the screen is flipped, all elements on the mask layer (HUD graphics and text, message windows, etc.) are improperly offset 5 pixels to the right. Notably, the ornate border around the player's health bar is placed partly off-screen. Both cadashu and cadashj fix this.

Projectile Bug
In earlier versions, there's a bug with the way the game clears projectiles that effects when the player can start shooting again. This is easiest to see as the Ninja: Go down the vine to the start of the first dungeon, then rapidly fire shuriken upwards. There should be moments where pressing the fire button does nothing, even though all of the shuriken have gone off-screen and despawned.

This effects the following weapons and spells:

• Fireball
• Flame Wall
• Fire Blade / Staff of Fire (Fireball only)
• Shuriken
• Butterfly Knife
• Dagger of Swallow
• Spirit Ball
• 3-Way Cutter

The updated sets add code to fix all of these except for the Dagger of Swallow.

Difficulty Tweaks

Herbs & Antidotes
Sets with the difficulty decreased change the number of medical herbs and antidotes that each player can carry from 4 to 8 each.

Shop Prices
The first change is simple: Medical Herbs have their prices decimated from 200 to 20 gold.

	Normal	Cheaper
1st Visit	50	50
2nd Visit	200	200
3rd Visit	1,000	1,000
4th Visit	6,000	2,000
5th Visit	30,000	5,000
6th+ Visit	60,000	5,000

Inn prices are slightly more complicated. In all sets, inn prices increase before hitting a cap. However, in the easier sets, the inn prices both cap earlier and at a much lower price.

Priest Spells
Three of the Priest's spells were changed between sets:

• Her Heal spell originally restored 16 HP of damage; this is also the amount it heals in the prototype. However, after the prototype, messages were added to both of the Priest's heal spells to tell the player how much HP each spell recovers. Heal 2 has its own special message, but the first Heal spell shares its message with the Medical Herb.

The problem with this is that the Medical Herb heals 10 HP, not 16, making the message inaccurate. To fix this, the cadashj and cadashu sets nerf the Heal spell to restore just 10 HP.

• The Protect spell originally absorbed 30 HP of damage. In some sets, this was increased to 50 HP.
• The Recover spell originally added 30 seconds to the timer. In certain sets, the amount restored was doubled to 60 seconds.

Amulet Worth
Originally worth 10,000 gold, some sets instead max out the player's savings at 60,000 gold.

Boss Difficulty

	HP		Attacks
Fire Elemental	500	300	Fireball	080 / 050 ATK
Baarogue (True Form)	2,000	1,000	Contact (Body) Contact (Tail)	100 / 090 ATK 120 / 100 ATK
Baarogue (1st Fight Threshold)	1,200	600
Baarogue (2nd Fight Threshold)	800	300

• The HP of the Fire Elemental was reduced, and Baarogue's HP in both fights was halved.

In both versions, Baarogue flies away in the first fight when he gets below 60% HP.

In the second fight, the amount of damage Baarogue has to take before his second head spawns changed from 60% to 70% of its HP, further reducing the difficulty of the fight.

• Some of Fire Elemental and Baarogue's attacks had their damage reduced. Note that the base damage of the Fire Elemental's fireballs was reduced just enough to let the Fighter's Silver Shield block them; the shield is ineffective in the harder sets.

Round 3 Secret

There's a hidden alcove with six NPCs that's located just above the gnome's hideaway in the bottom-left corner of Round 3.

To get to that spot, the player has to lure a spider over to where the stairs are and have it shoot a web to the right. The player must then jump to the right, quickly turn to the left, and then collide with the shot web. This should give them enough vertical momentum to grab onto an invisible vine. They would then simply take the vine up to access the hidden area.

Talking to the gnomes reveals that they're actually avatars for six of the game's developers. The translated text can be read in this Legends of Localization article, which also includes information about some of the cultural references in the text.

While it's still possible to access this area in non-Japanese sets, there's a check in the NPC code for these six specific characters that will despawn them if the region flag at 0x7FFFE in the main CPU is set to anything other than Japan (0x0001). Even if they did spawn, speaking to them would just produce blank text boxes; their dialogue was taken out of the script.