Hana no Keiji

Hana no Keiji: Kumo no Kanata ni
Developer: TOSE Publisher: Yojigen Platform: SNES Released in JP: November 18, 1994 This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select.

Hana no Keiji: Kumo no Kanata ni is a Super Famicom game based on the manga of the same name, a fictionalized tale of the 16th-century samurai Keiji Maeda. Historical accuracy not guaranteed.

Debug Mode 1

To access the first of the game's two debug modes, start the game with these Pro Action Replay (PAR) codes active:

80808D89 + 7E1403FF + 7E14047F

(The latter two codes force the normally invisible menu text to be displayed in white; be sure to deactivate the codes after the menu appears to prevent other things from being the wrong color.)

The top line reads "Maruyama's Play" (丸山様のお遊び). The other options:

• Play (お遊び): Skips to a specific story sequence.
• Picture room (かいがのへや): Menu for viewing various graphics.
• Play room (お遊びのへや): Menu for starting the game with specific conditions.
• Debug mode (でばっくもーど): Can be set to either on or off, but no longer does anything. This was probably used to activate additional debugging features during gameplay.
• Wani-chan (わにちゃん): Goes to debug menu 2.

Picture Room

This screen is used to view various text, character, and background graphics. Available options:

• Conversation no. (かいわNo): Displays one of 34 various Japanese text strings.
• Demo (big) (でも(大)): Shows Keiji's horse either with or without rider (this was apparently important enough for its own menu item).
• Face UP (big) (かおUP(大)): Shows large character portraits and palettes. Use Up/Down when viewing to cycle through various facial expressions.
• Face UP (small) (かおUP(小)): Shows small character portraits displayed on the left (右) and right (左) during conversations (use the D-Pad to select the left side and L/R to select the right side). When viewing, use Left/Right and L/R to cycle through expressions on either side.
• Background (big) (はいけい(大)): Displays the various screen-wide background graphics displayed during story sequences.
• Background (small) (はいけい(小)): Displays the various split backgrounds used during conversations (use Left/Right and L/R to scroll the top and bottom parts).
• Maru-san (まるさん): Returns to the main menu.

Play Room

To do: Someone who knows anything at all about the game please make this part better.

This menu is used to start the game at a point of your choice; the second two options let you start with any number of... whatever important things those correspond to in the game. Literally speaking, however, the first translates to "Play No." and the second and third are "Degree of Tilt" and "degree of cool wind".

(Source: Original TCRF research)

(translation: Joe)

Debug Menu 2

A second, very different debug menu (likely programmed by somebody else) can be accessed by selecting the last menu item in the first debug menu. The available options this time are:

• Routine Call: Switches to the intro, title, menu, ending, battles, etc.
• Atarihan: Opens a character hitbox editor.
• Atackhan: Opens a character animation viewer.
• Animehan: Throws a bunch of garbage all over the screen and then locks the game (probably did something better in the past).
• CHR Bank Check: Opens a graphics memory view.
• Sound Test: Counterintuitively, does nothing.

Hitbox Editor

This screen is used to view and edit characters' hitboxes for their various animation frames (although for some reason, the actual sprites are always displayed in the top-left corner.)

The interesting thing about this screen is that it was designed to let you click and resize the corners of hitboxes using the SNES Mouse in controller port 2 (although in the absence of a mouse, a regular controller works too.)

CH and PS select a character and animation frame. The colored buttons on the right select which of the five available hitboxes to edit (each corresponding to a different region of the body.) The arrows next to M and S allow you to move and resize the box in any direction.

While the option to save the modified hitboxes exists, clicking the Save button doesn't actually do anything, as it will attempt to write the changes to ROM; this means that the game was running from some form of writable media during development.

Animation Viewer

This screen has a similar interface and controls to the previous one, and is designed for viewing character animation frames. The purpose of the yellow hitbox and the ARM/DISABLE options is unknown.

CHR Bank Check

This screen displays whatever graphics are currently loaded into VRAM. Y/X select the starting address to view from, L/R select a palette, and the D-Pad scrolls around.

(Source: Original TCRF research)