Fire Hawk

Fire Hawk
Developer: Codemasters Publishers: Camerica (US), Codemasters (EU) Platform: Unlicensed NES Released in US: 1992 Released in EU: 1993 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has unused music. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences. This game has hidden bonus content.

Fire Hawk is a new take on the Oliver Twins' earlier top-down helicopter shooter Operation Gunship, now featuring random powerups from defeated enemies and a twitch-timing shooting gallery mode that must be endured to rescue paratroopers.

Unused Music

There seems to be no way to get this music track to play but to hack the game to write the number 6 to memory address $06E4. It is certainly a contrast to all the fast-paced rock music styles of the rest of the soundtrack.

Mystery World Dizzy Text

Exclusive to the European ROM at $0FA4B, $1B838 and $1BDD4 are excerpts from the script to Mystery World Dizzy, a game that wouldn't go public until 2017! Evidently the Polish and Portuguese translations had not been inserted at this point, and quotation marks don't appear to have been added to "Please let me out" yet, which happens to be located at the very beginning of the Mystery World Dizzy ROM. "The water quickly extinguishes the fire" was moved to after the Rockwart interactions and well before the Armourog interaction in that ROM, but the rest of this block retained this order.

E WATER QUICKLY EXTINGUISHES THE FIRE.

PLEASE LET ME OUT.

"I'D LIKE TO, BUT IF THE KING FOUND OUT HE'D TORTURE ME."

YOU GIVE THE APPLE TO THE TROLL.

"FOR ME, YOU'RE SO GENEROUS,  I WON'T LOOK IF YOU WANT TO ESCAPE OUT THE FIREPLACE USING THE JUG OF WATER."

WELL DONE! YOU'VE FOUND AN EXTRA LIFE.

"HI ROCKWART."

"GET OUT OF HERE DIZZY, I TOLD YOU HOW, GO BEFORE WE BOTH GET IN TROUBLE."

"WOULD YOU LIKE SOME BREAD?"

"WHAT, STALE BREAD, I DON'T THINK SO!"

"WOULD YOU LIKE ANY WATER?"

"NO, MY SHIFTS ARE SHORT, AND I THINK YOU MAY BE IN NEED OF THAT WATER."

YOU THROW THE MEATY BONE TO THE ARMOUROG BELOW.

THE ARMOUROG CATCHES THE BONE AND TAKES IT TO HIS DEN. YOU SHOULD BE SAFE NOW.

DIZZY THROWS THE HEAVY ROCK INTO THE RIVER.

THE ROCK LANDS IN THE RIVER AND DISPLACES THE WATER.

AGAIN THE WATER RISES AND THE LOG FLOATS HIGHER.

    DANGER!
POLLUTED RIVER 
 NO SWIMMING!

THE DRAGON SAW YOU WERE HOLDING HER EGG AND SO LET YOU PASS.

SHE OBVIOUSLY WASN'T GOING TO LET YOU OUT WITH HER EGG.

DIZZY THROWS THE SLEEPING POTION AT THE FIERCE DRAGON.

THE BOTTLE SMASHES NEAR THE DRAGON AND HE FALLS ASLEEP.

NGE, EVEN UP  HERE IN THE LIVING CHAMBERS YOU CAN  NOT FIND ANYONE.

YOU HAVE CLIMBED  UP TO THE TALLEST PART OF THE CASTLE

YOU ARE STANDING  INFRONT OF THE    CASTLE NEAR THE   PORTCULLIS.       

YOU 

YOU ARE CARRYING

YOU ARE CARRYING
IN YOUR BAG.

ROM/RAM Test

All NES games developed by Codemasters are based on the same stub library. As a result, all of these games, including those on multicarts, include a "smiley test" that verifies the integrity of the PRG ROM and CHR RAM chips.

To activate the PRG ROM test, hold Up + Down + Left + Right + A + Select + Start and press Reset. To activate the CHR RAM test, hold Up + Down + Left + Right + B + Select + Start and press Reset. (These tests can also be run simultaneously by holding both A and B, and the results will be ORed together in RAM.) If the PRG ROM checksum matches with the internal value or the CHR RAM chip has no bad cells, the program will display a happy green face; otherwise, it will display a sad red face. The code also attempts to write the test results to an unknown device at $4400, possibly an automated cartridge tester.

Note that the tests cannot be performed with an unmodified controller, as the design of the directional pad prevents more than two directions from being pressed at once.

Passed	Failed

Secret Names

Enter one of the following names to the high score table to see corresponding programmers' messages and some other stuff:

Secret Name	Message
"DIZZY......"	"BUY IT NOW!" (Dizzy demo)
"CREDITS...."	"FAMOUS NOW " (Credits screen)
"OLIVER TWIN"	"THE AUTHORS"
"CODE MASTER"	"BRILLIANT! "
"CAMERICA..."	"GOOD GUYS! "
"POGIE......"	"WE LOVE YOU"
"YOLKFOLK..."	"DIZZY FAN "
"DENZIL....."	"COOL DUDE "
"DORA......."	"DIZZYS SIS "
"DAISY......"	"DIZZYS GIRL"
"GRAND D...."	"YE WISE ONE"
"DYLAN......"	"OH WOW MAN!"
"DOZY......."	"ZZZZZZZZZZZ"
"MIG 29....."	"ITS 3D FUN "
"BMX SIM...."	"WE WROTE IT"
"BMX SIMULAT"	"ONE OF OURS"
"ROBIN HOOD."	"WE WROTE IT"
"ANDREW OLIV"	"AUTHOR "
"PHILIP OLIV"	"AUTHOR "
"PAUL ADAMS."	"ARTIST "
"GAVIN RAEBU"	"MUSICIAN "
" "	"SOMEBODY "
"TOYOTA MR2."	"MY NEW CAR "

Regional Differences

A customary change to 1993 Codemasters NES games in Europe was to blank out Camerica logos, since that company had gone defunct. In this case, the Codemasters logo was also removed from the title screen, perhaps to keep the title area from looking lopsided, but the developers neglected to re-center the title, which appeared to have been left of center in the first place only because Camerica had a wider logo than the old Codemasters logo. Both logos are still present in the ROM and loaded into the PPU during the title screen sequence.

USA	Europe

Camerica's name or logo still appears in all the button-code and high-score-name Easter eggs that invoked it, however; the Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy demo even still uses the blue Dizzy logo!

The copyright date on the Codemasters intro screen was also updated.

USA	Europe

The other customary change for Codemasters' later Europe-exclusive revisions such as this was to swap out the use of the NES color $0D for black in the palette in favor of $0E, as the low voltage signal of $0D is known to make the picture continually warp or bounce out of place on some displays. Now the offending color only appears for three frames while loading an overhead area before being replaced with $0E in the European release of this game, and during the Dizzy demo, $0D only appears during the fadeout at the end.