Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer (Neo Geo)

Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer
Also known as: Chojin Gakuen Gowcaizer Developer: Technos Japan Publisher: Technos Japan Platforms: Neo Geo, Arcade (Neo Geo) Released internationally: September 18, 1995 (MVS), October 20, 1995 (AES) This game has unused playable characters. This game has unused graphics. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test.

Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer is a perfect example of what happens when a game developer spends more time making painstakingly-detailed jiggly breast animations instead of actually making the game fun to play.

Test Modes and Debug Tools

Turning on Debug Dip 1-1 will activate a job meter display. This shows how much CPU power is being used by the game by obscuring a portion of the screen.

The game also features a debug mode that can be accessed by setting the machine to console mode, then turning on Debug Dip 2-8 at the Neo-Geo attract logo. Once the logo finishes playing, you'll be shown the menu above. Press Start to bypass the menu and go to the title screen.

(Source: Razoola)

(Note: For the purposes of this article, the credit display has been turned off.)

TOOL / GAME

Loads a very broken and unusable menu. At one point, it allowed devs to load graphics and other data, but trying to do anything shows an error message. The last option on this screen exits this menu.

CARD => ROM
Purpose unknown.

REDUCE TEST

Loads a scaling test menu.

Press A to enter the V REDUCE TEST. There you can press A to stretch the test image upwards, or B to squish it down. Hold down the C button to do it faster. You can't exit this test menu.

Press B to enter the H REDUCE TEST screen. Pressing Left and Right will let you choose a tile, and press A or B to change that tile's width. Just like before, you can't exit this test menu.

NOTHING
Does nothing. Hm.

DEMO LOOP
Lets you test various text displays in the game.

• 0:Winner Message: Choose the winning character, then choose the character he defeated. A victory screen with the two selected characters will pop up, and once it ends, you'll be able to select another pair of characters. Note that if you choose Ohga as the defeated character, you'll see the ending for the character you chose, followed by the credits and game over. Unless you try to view Ohga's ending, which will cause the game to crash. The Platonic Twins have no ending, the game just rolls the credits.

• 1:Half Demo 4 - Loads the text for the cutscene that plays after you defeat four enemies. The cutscene graphics are not displayed.
• 2:Half Demo 8 - Loads the text and cutscene for the chosen character which plays after you defeat eight enemies.
• 3:Twins Demo - Loads the text and cutscene for the chosen character which plays after you defeat ten enemies.
• 4:Ouga Demo - Loads the text and cutscene for the chosen character which plays before you fight the final boss. If you choose the Platonic Twins, the cutscene will have no text at all; Ouga cannot be selected.
• 5:Ending - Plays the ending for the selected character.
• 6:Staff Roll - Plays the credits.
• 6:Saabisu - Displays the post-credits fanservice image.

There's one character option in all the character tests that is entirely blank. Selecting that option will crash the game.

BG TEST

Loads a stage viewer. Move the screen by pressing a direction on the control stick, press A to load a different stage.

TOOL LOAD

This menu let developers load various tools. Attempting to load anything will cause an error message to pop up.

TEST MODE

Loads a new menu which has three selectable test modes.

Normal Testmode (press A) loads a service menu that lets you test all inputs, and also loads a sound test. The sound test is partially broken; choosing some entries will cause permanent silence.

Fix ROM Check (press B) loads a tileviewer for the Fix graphic layer. Press Up or Down to move the layer, and C to change the palette.

Object ROM Check (press C) loads a tileviewer for all C graphic data. Press Up or Down to move the layer, and C to change the palette. Hold down the A button to scroll the graphics less quickly.

Playable Bosses

Just like many other Neo Geo games, the normally unselectable bosses are playable via cheats. Change the value of 0x10464D for Player 1 or 0x10467D for Player 2 to 0x0A to play as Platonic Twins, or 0x0B to play as Ohga.

As with many other Neo Geo fighters of the time, these characters also have Player 2 palettes.

Once you clear the game with Platonic Twins (or with Ohga via cheats), it skips right to the credits, then to the Game Over screen... and it loads the player select screen, with both cursors set to CPU. Pressing Start on either pad will take you back to the main menu.

It is not possible to play an Ohga vs. Ohga match. Normally, Ohga waits until the other player finishes their intro to begin his. Since both keep waiting for the other to do their intro, the game softlocks.

Hidden Face

Present at 0x240 in the main graphic data.