Utsurun Desu.

Utsurun Desu.
Developers: Unknown (possibly Aprinet) Publisher: Takara Platform: NES Released in JP: March 6, 1992 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has unused graphics. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select. This game has a bugs page

Utsurun Desu. is a very strange platformer based on a very strange manga.

Sub-Page

Bugs

Unused Graphics

Portrait

A portrait of what seems to be a cat character.

Enemies

Plenty of graphics exist, though no palette data or code is currently known for any of them. Black & White has been used for clarity.

A large, shirtless man wearing what seems to be a turban and holding what seems to be a pickaxe. Would fall off the screen Mario-style when defeated.

A lady with Chun-Li style buns and a dress sitting on what appears to be a spear. It appears she would use a magic wand to hinder Kawauso.

A rather eager kid wielding a stick. Would fall over in surprise when defeated.

Two different sets of robotic cats that shoot missiles controlled by a small, non-robotic cat! Several variants exist, but none actually show up. A scrapped boss, perhaps?

Hidden Text

While it's safe to say that the message is indeed "Warning", the odd part is that it's in-between the graphics for the level 4 and 5 bosses! It doesn't seem to be scenery text though, as background tiles are further on in the game's graphics.

Hidden in the game's graphics is a date (May 17, 1991) and a developer credit.

These graphics depict parts of the final boss, which appear on the background layer. There are two instances of these in the ROM: one with the text, one without. The one used in-game does not have the text, as disabling the sprite layer reveals the neck space to be blank.

Stage Select

Start the game, hold A + B + Select, and work your way through all the title screens. You'll arrive at a very simple stage select screen. At first the screen will be pitch black, but use B to scroll through the levels and the level number will appear.

Debug Mode

After powering the console up, press Start once to get to the second title screen, then press Down (x8), B (x6), Left (x3), Select (x9), A. Nigori of the "で" kana symbol in the title will disappear, indicating the correct code entry. Several things will be enabled as a result:

The stage select. You'll be invulnerable to nearly all enemies during gameplay. You can still lose a life through spikes, though, as well as some enemies. You'll also start with ¥256,005,000. At the final boss, go to the right side of the screen and press Down to have a random item fall down from above, which you can use as a weapon. All rocks will disappear when the item appears, too.

Also, in every shop or dialog room, the top-left corner of the HUD above the HP will be filled with the message "PROG.by平山丈時", which is a reference to programmer Hirayama Jouji (YOU HEI).

Endings

The game has a good true ending, as well as three bad endings of some kind. There are only two things responsible for ending selection is how much money you have and how many times you died. Due to some weakness in the game's calculation logic, the result is sometimes quite random. The number of money is a 10-digit decimal number, so the maximum amount of money you can earn is 9,999,999,999 (10 billion). The last two digits aren't actually used in calculations during the game, as all of the shops' prices and any rewards are divisible by 100.

The only way to change the tens and ones digits is to die and continue the game. Every time you die, the counter will be increased. So basically, this is always the deaths counter, instead of actually a money counter (as a side note, the way it's calculated causes a side effect: if you die more than 99 times, the counter will reset to 0 and add 100 actual money to the counter).

The ending number is calculated based on comparison money digits. Let's name those digits from left to right with letters: ddccbbxxaa. "a" is the death counter, "x" is ignored, "b" is a count of 10,000, "c" is a count of millions, and "d" is a count of 100 millions. The table below shows the ending selection logic. If you note, the calculations are meant to just check if you have enough money for a certain ending, but as it turns out you can have a lot of money but one of several digit combinations that will give you the bad or worse ending anyway!

• Ending 0, "dancing on the south pole" — (max(a,b) >= c) && (max(a,b) >= d) — Maximum of a and b greater than or equal to c and d at the same time. This will cause the bad ending either if you have c and d at zero, or just LOWER than a or b!
• Ending 1, "dancing on the grass" — (max(a,b,c) < d) && (a >= 3) — Maximum of a, b, and c less than d. Number of deaths must be greater than or equal to 3.
• Ending 2, "wandering throughout the world" — (max(a,b) < c) && (max(a,b,c) >= d) — Maximum of a and b less than c, but maximum of a/b/c greater than or equal to d.
• Ending 3, "hawaii, the best ending" — (max(a,b,c) < d) && (a < 3) — Maximum of a, b, and c less than d. Number of deaths must be less than 3.