The Blue Marlin

The Blue Marlin
Developer: Mint Publisher: HOT-B Platform: NES Released in JP: December 27, 1991 Released in US: July 1992 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has unused music. This game has unused text. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has regional differences. This game has a bugs page

To do: Check out the Japanese version more. This article largely goes over the US version.

The Blue Marlin is HOT-B's attempt at a game where the player fishes for something other than bass fish in an endless summer.

Sub-Page

Bugs

Music

Sound Test

Hold Select + Start, then press Reset.

Unused Music

Tracks 14 and 17 in the sound test are unused in the game. 14 sounds like a short victory jingle and 17 is an action-packed loop.

Unused Events

Event $0A

There are 14 events that may occur during the reeling sequences. The most common are "SHOOT! THE HOOK CAME OUT" (number $0E), "GO FOR IT!" (number $0D) and "THE LINE'S REELING OUT!" (nmber $07). The rest are semi-random fishing events involving Marlin jumping, walking, Shark biting, etc. Some of thse are very rare.

One of the events, "THE ROD IS BROKEN" (event number $0A), is never assigned to any part of the game and thus never called. However, the switch case still exists in the scripts. To see it, when the game writes an event number in RAM at $5C4, write $0A there instead.

Unreferenced Event

Another unused event is totally unreferenced in scripts and can be seen only using the Game Genie codes NKNVLIVO+XONVGSNA, which replaces the "SHOOT! THE HOOK CAME OUT" event with this one. This event also mentions the broken equipment: "WHAT? THE REEL DOESN'T WORK!?", so it's possible they were cut out to reduce the difficulty.

Hidden Text

Soft Reset Check

The string "MEGUMI.MY.LOVE" appears in the ROM at offset 0x1E0E1 (not including the iNES header). While not seen in-game, this string is used as a RAM check to determine if the game has been soft-reset (with the Reset button) or hard-reset (by turning the power off and on again), likely used for the sound test.

It's worth noting that very similar messages appeared in several Hudson Soft games written by Kikuta Masaaki, such as Star Soldier, though whether he had any involvement with this game is currently unknown.

Info Strings

Two small strings found at 0x1EAF1 (US version) were likely used at the development stage as a debug event. It has the wrong spelling of "MARLIN" as well.

MARIN WEIGHT
MARIN HP TYPE

Footer

A version number and a title string can also be found in the footer at 0x1FFF0 (both versions). Both are part of the special ROM header used by some hardware (like FamicomBox) to autodetect the game's name, mapper, and size. This title string contains a typo of "MARINE" where it should be "MARLIN":

BLUE MARINE Ver1

Regional Differences

Password Screen

Japan	US

Event Graphics

Japan	North America

In North America, a somewhat gruesome image of a fish vomiting up its own stomach(!) in the "Go for it!" event was, of course, censored. The CHR graphics for the stomach are still present in the US version. All they did was remove the object insertion from the script. The event text was also rewritten to compensate; now the fish just gets tired.