Cosmic Fantasy 2

Cosmic Fantasy 2
Also known as: Cosmic Fantasy 2: Bouken Shounen Van (JP) Developer: Laser Soft Publishers: Telenet Japan (JP TGCD), Working Designs (US TGCD), Edia Co. (JP Switch), Limited Run Games (US Switch) Platforms: TurboGrafx-CD, Nintendo Switch Released internationally: January 25, 2024 (Nintendo eShop) Released in JP: May 5, 1991 (TGCD), December 15, 2022 (Switch) Released in US: 1992 (TGCD), February 11, 2024 (Switch) This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has regional differences. This game has hidden bonus content.

Cosmic Fantasy 2 is like Final Fantasy II, only COSMIC!!

This was the only game in the Cosmic Fantasy series to make it out of Japan until 2024, though it might have been better off staying there: while the cutscenes are impressive for 1991, the gameplay is decidedly lacking in the "fun" department (but quite overstocked when it comes to "endless, tedious random encounters").

To do: Dig into the Cosmic Fantasy Collection re-release. See if it has the developer notes, map notes, or Valis III references. Find out if the "Multi-Debugger" assets still exist but go unused. This version uses a redrawn title screen. Do the changes to The Captain and the bugged chest exist? It seems to have at least one of the Working Designs changes (the middle finger), there may be others.

Developer Message

This message is stored with the data for the hidden cutscene viewer at 0x5A5806 in CD track 2 of the Japanese version of the game. Line breaks have been added for readability.

VISUAL DEBUGGER-B Ver1.05 BY JUNPEH
--- Message to HU7CD programmers. --- 
Hellow everybody. How are you?. 
I am fine. Please phone to me when read this message. 
(044)541-9704 
It is my pribate phone number. 
I will waiting for your friendly messages.

Map Notes

Most of the game's maps have hidden notes drawn outside the visible area using scenery tiles. Usually, they indicate the map's internal number in the format "No. XX" or "T-No. XX". Many maps also contain "interior" areas on the same map as the "exterior" areas, warping the player between them when appropriate; sometimes, the interior "sub-areas" are each labeled with a letter hidden in the margins. A few maps contain additional notes of unclear significance, such as "SON".

These are most easily viewed using a walk-through-walls code, e.g. locking $1F0B42 to 0x00.

To do: Someone sufficiently motivated should document all these. Unfortunately, no such person exists.

Developer Credits

Scattered throughout the game's data are ASCII (and occasionally Shift-JIS) notes crediting the programmers, or at least JUNPEH and SHIMIZU. Offsets refer to the Japanese version. Some line breaks have been added for readability.

CD Track 2

Location	Text
0x3803	Start up and all Hu7CD-system maintenance by JUNPEH 清水君、ビジュアル手伝ってくれて有難う。 The second line translates to Shimizu, thank you for helping with the visual [programming].
0x420B 0x4A11	JUNPEH
0x1A003 0x1A2003 0x1A4003 0x1B6003	HU7-CD SYSTEM VISUAL PROGRAM BY JUNPEH
0x5A9801 0x5C3801 0x5CB801 0x5E5801 0x5E7801 0x5E9801 0x5EB801 0x5ED801 0x5EF801	VISUAL NULL PROGRAM LASER SOFT
0x5AD803 0x5AF803 0x5BD803 0x5D1803 0x5E3803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program by JUNPEH.
0x5B1803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT D by SHIMIZU
0x5B3803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT E by SHIMIZU
0x5B5803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT F by SHIMIZU
0x5B7803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT G by SHIMIZU
0x5B9803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT H by SHIMIZU
0x5BB803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT I by SHIMIZU
0x5BF803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT K by SHIMIZU
0x5C1803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT L by SHIMIZU
0x5C5803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT N by SHIMIZU
0x5C7803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACT o by SHIMIZU
0x5C9803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTP by SHIMIZU
0x5CD803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTR by SHIMIZU
0x5CF803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTS by SHIMIZU
0x5D3803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTU by SHIMIZU
0x5D5803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTV by SHIMIZU
0x5D7803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTW by SHIMIZU
0x5D9803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTX by SHIMIZU
0x5DB803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTY by SHIMIZU
0x5DD803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTZ0 by SHIMIZU
0x5DF803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTZ2 by SHIMIZU
0x5E1803	Cosmic Fantasy visual program ACTZ3 by SHIMIZU

To do: There are probably more of these, and there are definitely a few extra "Visual program by..." credits in the other data tracks (used for cutscenes).

Unused Text

Some other bits of normally-unseen text are found here and there in the data. Apparently, portions of the engine were recycled from Valis III, though interestingly, this game seems to have actually been released before that one.

CD Track 2

Location	Text
0x16005	Valis-III OVRSEG module
0x1680E 0x1880E 0x1A80E 0x1C80E	Field_01
0x18000	Valis-III PSGSEG module
0x180B4	VALIS_III
0xB2000	STG1A
0xB2A94	@VALIS3@
0x4DF801	VISUAL NULL PROGRAM ONLY 'RTS'.
0x574A8E	KNO386=ABCDEFG LIB=a:\qb\lib TMP=e:\ DEF=e:\ PAGER=five VCOM=-N1 HELP=A:\VZ COMSPEC=e:\bin\command.com PROMPT=[$p]
0x574BA2	KNO386=ABCDEFG LIB=a:\qb\lib

Cutscene Viewer

The game contains a somewhat elaborate cutscene viewer/sound test, which it bills as a "Multi Debugger". To access it in the Japanese version, boot the console to the BIOS screen, hold Up + Button I + Button II + Select simultaneously, then press and hold Run until the menu appears.

In the menu, Up and Down scroll the cursor, and Button I selects an option. In a pointlessly elaborate quirk, Select toggles the menu between "Normal" mode, in which pressing Up moves the cursor down and vice versa, and "Reverse" mode, which does the opposite.

The US TG-CD version changes the access code to Left + Select and removes the "OMAKE" option, as described below, but is otherwise the same.

The "Multi-Debugger" can't be accessed in the Switch re-release as there's no longer a BIOS screen. Instead, the cutscene viewer and sound test are moved to the Collection's main menu, meaning you can watch all the cutscenes without ever having played the game. The OMAKE content is still removed.

Notably, the Working Designs dub is not present in the Switch re-release, and instead the US version uses the original Japanese audio with subtitles.

Regional Differences

Graphics

A few of the game's cutscenes were edited, or in some cases removed entirely, in the original US version. The re-release on Switch reverts most of them--Rim is still Rim, Larla is still Larla, and the Japanese characters aren't changed.

JP	US

In the game's best-known change, Rim flips the bird during her introductory cutscene in the Japanese version. Her hand was redrawn into a clenched fist for the US release. The Switch re-release keeps this edit.

JP	US

JP	US

The version opts for a more standard romanization of the love interest's name. As a result, a couple of instances of "LARLA" written using English characters were edited to "LAURA".

Despite renaming Rim to "Babette", the US version does not remove or edit an instance of the original name in the background of the news bulletin regarding her disappearance.

JP	US

JP	US

JP	US

JP	US

The handful of cutscenes that contained visible Japanese text had it removed or replaced.

This short sequence, which gives the code to access the hidden cutscene viewer and encourages the player to watch Rim's shower scene again, appears after the ending credits in the Japanese version. It was removed in the US version.

Finally, these two scenes are accessible by selecting "OMAKE" from the hidden cutscene viewer in the Japanese version. They seem to be instructions for entering a giveaway related to the game. The "OMAKE" entry was removed from the cutscene viewer in the US version, making this inaccessible.

Difficulty

This was a very, very early Working Designs publishing effort, and as with some of their other early games like Lunar: The Silver Star, the changes to the game's difficulty are relatively subdued. Unfortunately, this phase didn't last for long.

In this case, the only difficulty-related changes were to three of the bosses:

Cosmic Fantasy 2 Boss Stat Changes

Name	HP	Attack	Defense		Name	HP	Attack	Defense		Name	HP	Attack	Defense
Captain	80	19 -> 40 +21, ×2.11	10 -> 20 +10, ×2.00		Galam (1)	9000	380	186 -> 200 +14, ×1.08		Galam (2)	9000 -> 9990 +990, ×1.11	900 -> 990 +90, ×1.10	500 -> 990 +490, ×1.98

The Captain is probably the most noticeably changed enemy; it's the first boss in the game, and while it's a complete pushover in the Japanese version that can't even hit Van for more than the minimum 1-4 damage, its attacks are so much more damaging in the American version that beating it more or less requires filling up the inventory with the free Herbs available at that point in the game.

As some small recompense for the extra trouble, the Captain yields 20 experience points upon defeat in the US version. It gave none in the original game.

Miscellaneous

JP	US

In the Japanese version of the game, there is a treasure chest in Cerum's dungeon that doesn't contain an item and instead gives a message that the chest is empty. In fact, this is the only empty chest in the game that the player can access; while there are a few other empty chests at the very end of Galam's fortress, they're just used to lure the player into pit traps and can't actually be collected without cheating.

In at least some versions of the US game, this empty chest is filled with Bingleberries. This was done to fix a bug: the "chest is empty" message wasn't translated for the US version, causing it to display a single kanji instead. Given that this is the only accessible empty chest in the game, and that the message wasn't translated, the absence of an item in the chest may well have been a mistake in the Japanese version.

There exists a report of the bugged message displaying in this dungeon in the US release, so it appears there may have been multiple revisions of the US version, some with the bug fixed and some without. Unfortunately, since the game sold in very small numbers, there isn't much documentation of this available.

Oddities

• The game does not contain magic attacks but has a set of accessories that reduce magical damage.
• The game does not contain status ailments but has a set of remedies and accessories that cure and prevent such ailments.