Steins;Gate (NES)

Steins;Gate
Also known as: FamicolleADV Steins;Gate (JP), 8-Bit ADV: Steins;Gate (US/EU) Developer: M2 Publishers: 5pb. Games (JP), Spike Chunsoft (US), Ravenscourt (EU) Platform: Unlicensed NES Released in JP: September 20, 2018 Released in US: February 19, 2019 Released in EU: February 19, 2019 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

The NES Steins;Gate was released as a bonus with the Switch version of Steins;Gate: Elite. It's not bad, and has a surprisingly good soundtrack.

The bonus is an NES ROM packaged in a fancy emulator, resulting in the game circulating online soon after its release. It also plays quite well on real NES/Famicom hardware.

To do: There's more unused graphics. Is the unused sound effect actually a sound effect, or the sound driver reading garbage? Is it possible to restore the missing sound channels for the unused song?

Unused Graphics

Stored near the ending graphics is a graphic featuring all the main characters of the series, originating from the trial version of the series' previous retro-style adventure game spinoff, Steins;Gate: Henikuukan no Octet (aka Steins;Gate 8-bit). It lacks an associated palette.

Its presence right next to the final ending graphics would suggest it was supposed to show up during the ending. The game instead cycles through the areas the player has traversed, ending with a graphic of Makise Kurisu.

Unused Audio

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An odd sound effect which sounds similar to the cursor selection sound, but extended with what sounds like other sound effects.

An incomplete arrangement of "Skyclad Observer", from the PC game of the same name. This was likely used for the credits, or the title screen. However, a completed version exists which adds the missing vocals. Interestingly, the conclusion for the missing channels can be drawn due to the complete version using the MMC5 expansion sound, while the "instrumental" version uses MMC3 (which lacks sound).

Oddities

Save Data

To do: What is the game actually saving? Find out what purpose the save data has.

The game generates an 8KB save file on most flashcarts and emulators (including Steins;Gate: Elite's own emulator), which is mostly empty except for a small amount of data. The game also prints "steins" at the beginning of the file.

This is odd since the game lacks a save system of any kind.

Other Remnants

Certain ROMs of the game, when loaded into Famicom Disk System development tools (such as the Sunsoft Tile Editor), will provide the file names of each CHR/PRG bank. Paired with the unused song's missing channels, it seems that the game changed mappers through development, going from FDS to MMC5 to MMC3.

Text Box Shaking

To do: Get a GIF of this in action.

When played on real hardware or on more accurate emulators, the game's textbox will jitter every time a song's sampled drums are played. This is not a problem on the software side, but rather the hardware side; This is because the MMC3 IRQs that are timed to split the screen are occasionally delayed due to the DMC DMA stealing CPU cycles, thus delaying the IRQ.

Since this hardware bug never occurs on Steins;Gate: Elite's own emulator, the visual oddity is thus absent.