Pocahontas (Genesis)

Pocahontas
Developer: Funcom Oslo Publisher: Disney Interactive Platform: Genesis Released in US: January 1, 1996 Released in EU: 1996 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused text.

Pocahontas was a game released late in the Sega Genesis's life. It also had a Game Boy counterpart, as well as a planned, but scrapped, SNES version.

Unused Text

Various strange, unused chunks of text were found in the game. The stranger ones may have been placeholders.

The text starts at offset 0xA6A0. It says:

THIS IS A NEW INVENTION I
MADE! I CALL IT
P O P C O R N ! ! !

Also, at 0x104F0:

I heard you farting,
My life will never be the same again,
I heard you farting,
Sing AnDybDahl!

At 0x109B0, there is a note to a programmer:

Optimize the engine
so that the game doesn't chunk up
every single time pocahontas jumps

At 0x12194:

?????


Isn't this out of the game?

Unknown Passwords

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

At 001417B is a series of 15 hardcoded passwords. Like all passwords in the game, these consist of an animal icon plus five plaintext characters. In the ROM, each animal icon is coded in a single byte as a number between 00 and 08, in the same order as the game's password screen, e.g. 00 = Bear, 01 = Bird, 02 = Owl, etc. After that, the remainder of the character follows in plaintext.

(Source: Tony H @ Sega-16.com)

Inputting any of these passwords will trigger a bad password message ("PASSWORD WAS WRONG"), and 13 of them will also trigger a sound effect. For most of the passwords the effect on gameplay (if any) is unknown, with the exception of one password that immediately triggers the game's ending sequence, and one that disables certain enemies in the third level.

The passwords seem to be based on the names of various people who worked on the game, although one of them is possibly a reference to another game Funcom developed at the time, Nightmare Circus.

The list is as follows:

Password		Sound Effect	Additional Effects	Developer Referenced
	C1RCS	Scream of "Savages!" (Sound 13)	Unknown	Nightmare Circus (another game by Funcom)
	CH1PV	None	Guards in Level 3 won't shoot Pocahontas	Chip Vollers (Project Manager)(Disney Interactive)
	NDRSD	Indian war cry (Sound 58)	Unknown	Anders Dybdahl (Programmer)(Funcom)
	CLNRK	Meeko chitters (Sound 19)	Unknown	Carl-Henrik Skårstedt (Lead Programmer/Engine 2 Design and Coding)(Funcom)
	L1LCN	Frog ribbits (Sound 16)	Unknown	Leila Chang (Associate Producer)(Disney Interactive)
	JSPRH	Pocahontas grunts (Sound 23)	Unknown	Jesper Hansen (Programmer/Additional Tools)(Funcom)
	KNDLL	Guard screams (Sound 60)	Unknown	?
	GLRSN	None	Displays bad password message for a split second, then triggers ending	?
	0LPTR	Crashing sound (Sound 26)	Unknown	Ole-Petter Rosenlund (Lead Graphic Artist)(Funcom)
	J0CKB	Duck quacks (Sound 12)	Unknown	?
	CR1ST	Bird noise? (Sound 25)	Unknown	Christina Vann (Lead Artist)(Disney Interactive)
	GLNNK	Wolf howls (Sound 39)	Unknown	Glenn Kristoffersen (Character Rendering)(Funcom)
	G0DGR	Checkpoint SFX? (Sound 38)	Unknown	Gaute Godager (Producer/Paper Design)(Funcom)
	JQKR1	Pocahontas: "No!" (Sound 57)	Unknown	Jack Kristoffersen (Background Editing)(Funcom)
	LNSHN	Metallic sound (Sound 61)	Unknown	Lin Shen (Lead Artist)(Disney Interactive)