Judgement Silversword: Rebirth Edition

Judgement Silversword: Rebirth Edition
Developer: M-KAI Publisher: Qute Platform: WonderSwan Color Released in JP: February 2, 2004 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has a hidden level select. This game has revisional differences.

Judgement Silversword: Rebirth Edition is one of the rarest and most expensive games on the WonderSwan Color, which came to prominence when it was submitted (minus the Rebirth Edition) to and ultimately won the 2001 WonderWitch Grand Prix, a coding compo which ran yearly from 2001 to 2003. Following this success, it was picked up by Qute for an extremely limited commercial release, alongside 2002 winner DicingKnight.

The game was also included with the 2011 Xbox 360 game Eschatos, then later given a solo rerelease on Steam in 2015 as Judgement Silversword: Resurrection.

Lv50 Unlock Command

Both versions of the game have a code to unlock all of the bonuses usually obtained through gameplay, including sound test, stage select, god mode and debug-shot. On the Information screen, enter the following:

Start (8 times), Y3, Y2, B, Y1, Y4, Y3, Y4, A, B, Y2

This code was implemented as a failsafe in case of the cartridge's battery-backed SRAM dying. As such, it was removed from the Xbox 360 port of the game included as a bonus feature in Eschatos.

(Code: Official "Hidden Content" Page, Details: M-KAI Interview, Translation: Shmuplations)

Revision Differences

The 2005 reprint of the game adds an additional "Happy Field Project" splash screen, makes some tweaks to the copyright dates, adds an additional gameplay mode and introduces a minor bug. Following the pattern of other M-KAI releases, the "Rev. 4321" of the original pressing actually represents a build date: 2004/03/21, in the Japanese style. While frequently misquoted as "Rev. SC21", the later edition is more likely "5C21", or 2005/12/21, with the month in hex.

Rev. 4321
Rev. 5C21

Broken Debug-Shot

The bug noted above is with the DEBUG-SHOT function of the SET UP MODE screen. In Rev. 4321, this adds an additional (very large, very strong) shot mode for the player's ship on the X3 button, as seen at right. In 5C21, this cheat is simply nonfunctional, with no change in available weaponry whether enabled or not.

WonderWitch Leftovers

Strings in the Judgement Silversword ROMs show the extent to which its hardware seems to have been based on the WonderWitch homebrew cart, on which the game originated. Due to the overwhelming number of such strings, only the (marginally) more interesting are noted here. This means errors and some file transfer dialogues are not shown. Where the offsets differ, the Rev. 4321 locations are shown first, with their location in Rev. 5C21 shown below.

11DD	TEST FLASH # TEST SRAM # OK NG! Completed!	While the WonderWitch shipped on rewritable flash (and performed checks on both flash and SRAM on startup), the commercial Judgement Silversword release only checks SRAM for obvious reasons.
379A	init.rc:%d: %s /rom0/init.rc Line too long IL cannot exec IO	/rom0 refers to the (on a WonderWitch) rewritable flash portion of the cart. IL files are WonderWitch libraries.
39D8	<Initializing File System> DISABLE_SHELL_RESUME /kern /rom0 @ilib @proc プ・セスを・ ドできませんでした. file: freya static OS 1.2.0S	FreyaOS 1.2.0 was the final version released to hobbyist WonderWitch developers; this static version is presumably adapted for running on read-only memory.
3BF0	@rfs 1.2.0S 020918/1722	@rfs refers to the root file system, then there's another FreyaOS version, plus a build date, signifying September 18, 2002 at 17:22.
13181 13241	/ram0/JSS2.SAV	In the homebrew version, JSS_SAVE is written to the same location (on the SRAM bank).
1357C 1363E	ST1A_SCP ST2A_SCP ST3A_SCP ...	Beginning here is a list of assets used by the game; unlike standard WonderSwan games, WonderWitch homebrew uses a file system and requires the user to copy each file separately to the device. This appears to have been carried over in Judgement Silversword, and file names are listed throughout. Not shown in full here.
60EBA 6223A	Sound sound SoundIL version 0.9	Sound.IL is the same sound library used in most later WonderWitch homebrews.
61196 62516	[Original SoundDriver for WonderSwan Version 1.0 Copyright(C) Ikuo Komiyama 1999,2000]
632E0 64660	JSS2 SILVERSWORD_2ND	These internal names denote this as the second incarnation of Judgement Silversword, including the original homebrew.
70000	ELISA	This string appears at the same location in Dicing Knight. and the WonderWitch itself.
7EEAA	Clock Initialized	Another standard WonderWitch string; this appears on startup of the homebrew device. Again, the same string also remains in Dicing Knight.