Eternal Champions: Challenge From the Dark Side

Eternal Champions: Challenge From the Dark Side
Developer: Sega Interactive Publisher: Sega Platform: Sega CD Released in US: February 1995 Released in EU: 1995 This game has unused graphics. This game has debugging material.

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Eternal Champions: Challenge From the Dark Side is the semi-sequel to the Genesis fighting game Eternal Champions, and is notable for not only being one of the last Sega CD games released in 1995 but one of the few which took advantage of the Sega CD's features and storage space. It also featured FMVs which, while grainy, were full-color CGI (although CGI rendering was pretty simplistic at the time). The blood and gore were also ramped up, with a host of new finishers.

Unused Animation

While Sega CD games are difficult to look through for sprites, there are programs such as Artmoney which can do so. The following sprites were found in the ISO:

Unlike the Eternal Champion, who has a unique win animation for his second set of forms, Dark Eternal Champion uses the same win animation for both sets of forms. This could have been used for that, or a scrapped special move of some kind.

To do: See if there are any more unused sprites in the ROM using the BIN dump I have.

Debug Mode

While the first game had what appeared to be debug menu leftovers, this game has a fully-working debug mode. First, enter a fight and either win or lose. Once the blue results screen after a match comes up, press Y, A, B, B, A, Down, A, B, B, A, Down, Up, Up, Z, Z, Y ("YABBA DABBA DUUZZY") on Controller 2. A sound will play confirming it was entered correctly. Afterward, pause the game during a fight and enter one of these commands on Controller 1:

Command	Effect
A, A, A	Player 1's health becomes critical
B, B, B	Player 2's health becomes critical
C, C, C	Music is turned off (cannot be turned back on)
X, X, X	Both players are healed
Y, Y, Y	Each character receives one-hit damage (this will also make projectile attacks not cause damage)
Z, Z, Z	Inner Strength is restored for both players
Left, Left, Left, A	Both players receive 20% health
Right, Right, Right, A	Player is warped to Eternal Champion stage after match (only works in Contest mode)
Mode, Mode, Mode, A	Player is warped to Dark Eternal Champion stage after the match (only works in Contest mode on Warrior difficulty or higher; also, on Champion difficulty the player will play as the Eternal Champion rather than the character the player chose)

Character Unlock Codes

As opposed to unlocking the secret characters normally, there are cheat codes to unlock each of them. While they don't spell out funny messages, they do work and are entered in the same way as debug mode.

These cheats were probably used by the developers as a means of testing, but they could also just have been made because some of the character unlock methods are rather strange. Once again, use Controller 2 and enter the following codes on the blue results screen after a match:

Character	Code
Blast	Z, Left, Y, Up, X, B, Mode, Right, Up
Chin Wo	B, Z, Up, Mode, Right, C, B, Up, Y, Up
Crispy	Mode, Up, C, Up, Mode, Y, Y, Right, Mode, A, Left
Eternal Champion	C, Left, Y, B, Mode, X, Right, C, Mode, Down, Down, Right
Eternal Champion 2	X, Z, A, Mode, Down, Left, C, B, Right, Y, Up, Mode, Y, C
Hooter	X, C, Right, X, B, Right, Z, A, Mode, Up
Senator	Right, C, C, Left, Mode, B, Down, X, A, X, Mode
Slither	B, Y, Up, Up, C, X, Left, Up, X, Y
Thanatos	Mode, C, Y, A, B, Up, B, B, Y, Z, C
Yappy	Y, Y, Up, Down, Z, Mode, Down, Z, Up, Up, X
Zuni	Y, X, Down, B, Mode, Up, X, Up, Up, Left, Z, Up

The unlocked characters will be saved to the backup RAM.