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Trevor McFur cheat mode not working


phoenixdownita

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I follow the instructions, and at the title screen press 1 then 1 then 9 then 3, nothing happens.

 

I mean not only I don't get any feedback that the cheat mode is on, assuming there was such feedback, but then during the game none of the buttons on controller 2 does absolutely anything, given the game is a little too hard for me I wanted to play with some cheats.

Without cheat I only manage to get (and sometimes beat) the first boss on any of the 4 satellite moons but other than that the few times I am in stage 2 of any of those moons is even harder.

 

Anyone?

Edited by phoenixdownita
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I finished Trevor McFur without cheats. Although it's not a very good game, I think using cheats actually makes it worse because the game is definitely not about the level design (which often seems to be just a bunch of random enemy and object placement). It's more about conserving your power-ups, knowing the right time to use them, and being so focused on avoiding losing lives that you overlook many of the shortcomings of the game.

 

Sorry that response is of no help with regard to your intended question though!

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... it's not a very good game

...the game is definitely not about the level design (which often seems to be just a bunch of random enemy and object placement)

... being so focused on avoiding losing lives that you overlook many of the shortcomings of the game.

 

...

Yeah, it's not very good, and too hard as well.

The fact that each of the 4 moons starts with the same first stage (gfx at least) but has a much better second stage that's more graphically unique should have been changed by going right to the second part at least as a showcase piece.

 

Those bosses are meh ... graphically not bad at all but a little too fast and they all need to be dealt with via the laser cannon.

 

I was watching a play through on u-tube so I got interested in trying .... but without cheats and given how dull it plays it's not really an option

(as you said, random waves of enemies not particularly interesting at that).

 

I paid my dues to "gfx only" games way back, with the Amiga version of Sword of Sodan, huge BOBs but not much gameplay .... no wonder it tanked on the Genesis.

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As far as I can tell, are all of the enemies and objects at exactly the same place on the same time, everytime you play this game, there is nothing random.

 

Also each first stage starts in space, but with different layouts of backgrounds and groups of enemies that will give you more or less powerups to collect.

This way it makes a difference in which order you select the moons to play, to collect powerups the quickest way.

 

The bosses are very easy if you activate the shield powerup, and move towards them while shooting and bombing them at the same time.

This only works best if you've collected the bullets and bombs powerups during the stage to finish the bosses.

On some bosses you can use a special weapon, but I mainly use the way as described above.

 

Rely on your powered up bullets only, and save the special weapons as much as possible because if all your weapons are full, you will receive the blue powerups which will give you extra lives (after 10 pickups or so).

I use the magnet the most, if I get cornered and the shield mainly for the bosses.

The last level is where I use my collected special weapons to breeze through that level.

 

If you know these rules, you'll see that you can beat the game using just one credit.

Edited by Isgoed
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PAL is supposed to be slower, so maybe get a 50/60 switch would be the cheat you need if you're a NTSC owner.

I've gotten to the last level, the city planet, but haven't reached until *Odd-head* yet. Put some more hours into it, and your skills would advance.

"- How do I get to Carnegie hall? - Practice, man, practice!"

Think the randomness gives it more replayability since playing lots of shumps where everything follows the same pattern is kind of the standard.

Yes, the trick is to not die (duuh) and save the weapons for the right use, a skill which comes over time - as mentioned above.

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Any of you guys with the game willing to try the cheat code and tell me if it even works for you?

http://atariage.com/software_hints.php?SoftwareHintID=301

Someone else had troubles w/the code in the past: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/133206-trevor-mcfur-cheat-code/

 

He never really mentioned what he did that made it work, but at least it seems you're not alone.

 

Edit: And this guy too: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/152805-just-won-trevor-mcfur/?p=1872290

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Any of you guys with the game willing to try the cheat code and tell me if it even works for you?

http://atariage.com/software_hints.php?SoftwareHintID=301

 

Which cart version do you have?

 

I own two different carts, and this is what happened.

 

-J9001 cheat works with 50Hz. and 60Hz. mode

-J9001E cheat works with 50Hz. NOT 60Hz.

 

I tried several times, but with the J9001E cart the cheat doesn't work with 60Hz. (NTSC) mode

 

If I recall correctly, are the carts with the "E" for PAL countries as with Raiden for a full screen image.

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Which cart version do you have?

 

I own two different carts, and this is what happened.

 

-J9001 cheat works with 50Hz. and 60Hz. mode

-J9001E cheat works with 50Hz. NOT 60Hz.

 

I tried several times, but with the J9001E cart the cheat doesn't work with 60Hz. (NTSC) mode

 

If I recall correctly, are the carts with the "E" for PAL countries as with Raiden for a full screen image.

And we have a winner (or a loser depending on your point of view) it's a J9001E ... thanks a lot.

 

As I was at it I checked all my carts and lo and behold 75% are E.

 

Damn it, I wonder if there are other differences aside the cheats, maybe some of the E versions were tuned for 50 frames and even if they work at 60 it is just harder [17% faster] ... it would not be a first, anyone try Xenon 2 Megablast for Genesis at 50 vs 60hz, and you'll see.

 

Well mystery solved, I hope that the rest of my E games are NOT prone to the 17% speedup as if it is the case then my perception of some of the Jag games may be wrong as they would appear faster/harder than they should be [fighters too fast, can't do it within time as the time is clicking too fast for racers etc.....]

 

EDIT: I bought all my gear in NTSC land from NTSC sellers, I wonder if when Atari went belly up there was a flood of "PAL" importing back just to see if they could get rid of the inventory faster, it's weird that so many carts I bought at random times over the years are E versions.

Edited by phoenixdownita
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Wow, that's interesting, I'll dig out my Trevor McFur this week and see if it's an E cart. Did you try typing the cheat code 17% faster than you were? :)

 

I didn't think that any games were specifically optimized for PAL other than Raiden, it's curious why the cheat wouldn't work on 60Hz.

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I am not sure what timing the cheat input code is using but 17% may throw it off completely.

 

What's more interesting though is if the game auto-tune the gameplay/speed correctly (and this applies to all Jag games) or not.

 

Many companies back in the days did not really have a 50 and 60 frame versions, and as long as difference in timing didn't cause breaking bugs the PAL version used to be a slowed down NTSC [with music/sounds slightly off pitch as well].

But there were a few cases (example when the system was way more popular in Europe) that made the game at 50 and then the port at 60 did require some rework or it never existed (Xenon 2 Megablast for SMS this time is in this bucket, at 60Hz it has game breaking bugs and there's no 50Hz version, so I ended up buying a PAL SMS2)...

 

I just was NOT under the impression that Atari Jag was more popular in Europe or that games would have been developed at 50Hz first then adapted at 60, I expected it was the other way around. Was the Jag more popular in PAL land?

Disclaimer: I was living in PAL land during the 90s and I didn't remember it being such a big hit.

There are other precedents of 50Hz being the leader like late A8 games, late SMS games, late Amiga games and obviously ZX spectrum and CPC.

 

Let's just say I am surprised to say the least that Jag games were dual versioned.

 

To top it all off PAL60 is well supported even from cheap PAL/NTSC->HDMI converters so if I had a PAL Jag with a 60Hz switch I could have my cake and eat it too. Alas NTSC50 is not supported at all, I tried with a MD2 and got nothing even out of an XRGB Mini.

So it is useless for me to put a 50/50Hz switch on my Jag.

 

At the same time I don't want to buy again my games to see if "real" 60Hz versions do play better .... until I have a way to compare the gameplay to see actual differences (the aforementioned 17% speedup) I'll ignore I ever found it out.

[Maybe I will try to buy a non E Trevor McFur, I should find it cheap enough to make the experiment worthy, my Cybermorph also is E,I wonder if that was NTSC first then slowed down in PAL or if there was a specific PAL release hence mine is also playing 17% faster]

Edited by phoenixdownita
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The carts all play the same, the difference in speed is the Hz. from the console, so 60Hz. (NTSC) or 50Hz. (PAL), it doesn't matter if it is a "E" cart or not.

 

AFAIK are Raiden and TmF the only games that show a big ugly black border at the bottom of the screen when playing on a PAL console on a PAL television.

The carts with the "E" added solved this problem.

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We don't know that for sure anymore.

If a game is strictly locked to the VSYNC and has no other way to measure time duration, 50 to 60hz means a +/- 17% increase/decrease in speed/gameplay.

If instead there are other timers inside the Jag at fixed/known frequency then the game can have it's gameplay largely independent from the screen refresh and compensate for the difference, alternatively if the game can detect 50/60Hz it can adapt its timing routines (but we don't know for sure if they actually did adapt).

 

Take for example PowerDrive Rally, if the time is measured via the VSYNC count only without knowing 50/60hz then the actual timer would run faster/slower and can throw off the gameplay making for example too difficult to finish the laps in the allotted time, after all as humans it is actually hard to compensate for a 17% speed increase for games that require subsecond reactions.

Edited by phoenixdownita
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I know for sure :)

 

Since years 2 of my Jaguar consoles are modded with the switch, and I have played Raiden and TmF a lot, both the cart variants in both modes (didn't know about this cheat "bug" until this evening).

 

The game speed is affected by the Hz. of the console, not the carts.

 

If you play a "E" version of Raiden or TmF on your NTSC console, my non "E" version will run at the same speed on my modded 60Hz. PAL console.

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I know for sure :)

 

Since years 2 of my Jaguar consoles are modded with the switch, and I have played Raiden and TmF a lot, both the cart variants in both modes (didn't know about this cheat "bug" until this evening).

 

The game speed is affected by the Hz. of the console, not the carts.

 

If you play a "E" version of Raiden or TmF on your NTSC console, my non "E" version will run at the same speed on my modded 60Hz. PAL console.

Awesome, can we use you to test more games that you own in both E/nonE versions?

Or maybe you already did it?

 

If you have time can you check if the PAL vs NTSC does affect speed in game? Is the NTSC simply faster? For both TmF and Raiden?

Finally playing the E version on NTSC can you tell if it is using the higher resolution (no letter box)?

 

[sorry for the slew of questions, but if it all ends up being just one broken cheat I can put my obsession to rest pretty easily]

Edited by phoenixdownita
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That's what it is, one broken cheat :)

 

Concerning your questions, read my previous answers to you again in the above posts, it should explain/answer most them.

 

Most of the Jaguar carts are E carts, some non E carts which also give no problems.

 

Raiden and TmF are the only games without E having issues on PAL displays, maybe Dino Dudes also but I can't confirm that.

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Thanks. Given your experience playing TmF and Raiden would say that they were meant to be played at 50Hz speed or 60Hz speed?

The fact that the gameplay is different means the developers didn't bother much setting a "desired" speed for the game and then let the players suck it up, if the game was meant for 60Hz then the PAL players got it too slow, otherwise if it was meant for 50Hz then NTSC player got it too fast (and likely too difficult).

 

 


Most of the Jaguar carts are E carts, some non E carts which also give no problems.

This is interesting, does it automatically mean the Jag was more popular in Europe?

[i am assuming the E stands for Europe, but I may be wrong].

 

EDIT: maybe E means simply that the game is dual mode, not necessarily Europe version

Edited by phoenixdownita
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Not that I know of.

 

The weird thing is that a long long time ago, I bought Raiden which was advertised as the US version, with only a English written manual (so no French or whatever language) off German e-bay.

I didn't care if it was a US version or not, as I thought that the games were the same anyway (and man did I enjoy it when I got it!).

 

Only a couple of years ago B & C talked here on AA about the differences of the "E" marked Raiden carts.

It was then that I looked and discovered that I had the E version, and of course didn't know about the "black border problem" as my copy worked fine with a PAL setup.

 

If you search on AA you will possibly find the thread.

 

Some games play better at 50Hz. then 60Hz. because there is less slowdown, like T2K when things get hectic.

 

If you play Primal Rage on a NTSC console, you'll see that the intro music is out of sync with the program/intro as it seems to be too slow/too late, like the big stone with PR written on it falls down and a second later you "hear" it fall.

It plays excellent, and much faster and fluid on NTSC than on a PAL machine.

 

However, on a PAL machine the music plays perfect in sync with the program and with the intermission screens while the gameplay is very (too) slow and not fun at all.

How weird is that??

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E stands for Europe (thought this was common knowledge, so I have no hot link sorry)

There must be some reason they mad games with # + E and games without it.

But I have no clue what (I got too low skills on tech magic)? ****

If you think the 17% faster version is unplayable, and I, on a slower PAL, can get to the last level by playing it 12 hours or so, I think the PAL speed was optimal for this game.

As with Jaguar - the seemed to rush it and just toss out the beta games, so lots of loose ends...

****EDIT: oh, to get rid of the black boxes/small screen issue, should be the reason...

Edited by Atlantis
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Were the studios that were making Jag games at the time mostly in Europe (maybe UK)?

If so that would explain partially the fact that the PAL version of 'many' games should be the one with the right timing and the NTSC one could just be accelerated (and not compensated for).

 

Nice example with the music for PrimalRage, it seems the Jag had a sure way to play music at fixed frequencies (likely Jerry had a fixed freqeuncy timer which had little to do with the video refresh rate, in order to ensure 44.1KHz CD like audio). If the intro is too fast for the music to be in sync then it goes by itself that that intro was meant to be played at 50Hz.

 

Fascinating how a thread about a broken cheat code in an admittedly low-ish quality very early release (launch title mind you) re-discovers little known facts about Jag games behaviors.

EDIT: ... or my google-fu skills are just crap ;-)

Edited by phoenixdownita
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likely Jerry had a fixed freqeuncy timer which had little to do with the video refresh rate, in order to ensure 44.1KHz CD like audio

Both audio and video clocks are derived from a single master clock, with different divisiors for 50 Hz and 60 Hz, and various audio sample rates. The master clock frequency is not the same for NTSC and PAL consoles, but the difference is really tiny (~ 0.01%).

JagCD games with audio tracks use a 44.1 kHz audio clock generated by the JagCD instead of the "built-in" one.

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Both audio and video clocks are derived from a single master clock, with different divisiors for 50 Hz and 60 Hz, and various audio sample rates. The master clock frequency is not the same for NTSC and PAL consoles, but the difference is really tiny (~ 0.01%).

JagCD games with audio tracks use a 44.1 kHz audio clock generated by the JagCD instead of the "built-in" one.

Yeap, I figured, thanks for confirming.

Regarding sound speed-up/slow-down I was referring to when the main CPU (or SOUND CPU in some consoles) is supposed to be pumping data in sync with the VBLANK, thankfully when you have DAC (or DAC-like) support usually the custom chips help themselves and at least problems of pitch-frequency due to 50/60hz VSYNC interrupt frequency are largely irrelevant.

 

There's a few notable games for the Sega MD that have the music be out of pitch as the developers didn't care to compensate ... oh well. A glaring 50/60hz mismatch is in the Saturn acclaimed game Panzer Dragoon Saga, there's an introductory movie that stutters in PAL.

Edited by phoenixdownita
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Alright, I bit the bullet and bought an RGB cable for the Jag, it'll take a while (it sits across the pond) to get here though.

I will mod my Jag for 50/60Hz and assigning I don't fry it I want to see if I can tell the difference in games speed and if it makes it any easier in TmF (most likely I just suck at it but I've been wrong before).

 

The choice was among spending ~18US$ for a TmF nonE (J9001), or ~18US$ for an RGB cable .... might as well buy the cable as I am all geared up with the XRGB Mini anyway.

So far I resisted the RGB cable purchase as the Jag SVideo is plenty nice on my LCD TV so no real need/justification, but to get to the bottom of this ... need and justification are aplenty ;-) .

Edited by phoenixdownita
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