Steins;Gate (NES)

Steins;Gate
Also known as: 8-Bit ADV: Steins;Gate Developers: 5pb. Games, MAGES Publishers: 5pb. Games, Spike Chunsoft Platforms: NES, Nintendo Switch Released internationally: September 20, 2018 Released in JP: 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 is an added exclusive bonus to the Switch version of Steins;Gate: Elite, which is an NES ROM packaged in a fancy emulator. The game itself isn't too bad, and has a surprisingly good soundtrack. It can also play quite well on real NES 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. 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

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, and then back to MMC3.