Sonic Spinball (J2ME, BREW)

Sonic Spinball
Developer: Distinctive Developments Publisher: EA Mobile Platforms: J2ME, BREW Released internationally: 2009 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select. This game has unusual dummy files.

A feature phone port of the Genesis version for J2ME, BREW, and Windows Mobile.

Cheat Codes

This port of Spinball has multiple cheats that can be activated by inputting certain key combinations while in the game with the pause menu open. Some versions do not have the "Go to Stage 2-4" and "Go to Bonus Stage 1-3" cheat codes.

The codes and their known effects are below:

To do: Document the Unknown effects within the below table.

Code	ID	Effect
# 9 9 0 1	0	Toggle FPS counter
# 9 3 1 7 * 0 1	1	Go to Stage 1
# 9 3 1 7 * 0 2	2	Go to Stage 2
# 9 3 1 7 * 0 3	3	Go to Stage 3
# 9 3 1 7 * 0 4	4	Go to Stage 4
# 9 3 1 7 * 1 9	5	Go to Bonus Stage 1
# 9 3 1 7 * 9 9	6	Set lives to 65,535
# 9 3 1 7 * 1 1	7	While in Stage 1, collect Emerald 1
# 9 3 1 7 * 1 2	8	While in Stage 1, collect Emerald 2
# 9 3 1 7 * 1 3	9	While in Stage 1, collect Emerald 3
# 9 3 1 7 * 2 1	10	While in Stage 2, collect Emerald 1
# 9 3 1 7 * 2 2	11	While in Stage 2, collect Emerald 2
# 9 3 1 7 * 2 3	12	While in Stage 2, collect Emerald 3
# 9 3 1 7 * 2 9	13	Go to Bonus Stage 2
# 9 3 1 7 * 3 1	14	While in Stage 3, collect Emerald 1
# 9 3 1 7 * 3 2	15	While in Stage 3, collect Emerald 2
# 9 3 1 7 * 3 3	16	While in Stage 3, collect Emerald 3
# 9 3 1 7 * 3 4	17	While in Stage 3, collect Emerald 4
# 9 3 1 7 * 3 5	18	While in Stage 3, collect Emerald 5
# 9 3 1 7 * 3 9	19	Go to Bonus Stage 3
# 9 3 1 7 * 4 1	20	While in Stage 4, collect Emerald 1
# 9 3 1 7 * 4 2	21	While in Stage 4, collect Emerald 2
# 9 3 1 7 * 4 3	22	While in Stage 4, collect Emerald 3
# 9 3 1 7 * 4 4	23	While in Stage 4, collect Emerald 4
# 9 3 1 7 * 4 5	24	While in Stage 4, collect Emerald 5
# 9 3 1 7 * 9 1	25	Unknown
# 9 3 1 7 * 9 2	26	Unknown
# 9 3 1 7 * 9 3	27	Unknown
# *	28	While in Stage 4, teleport on top of the Robotnik boss
# 9 3 1 7 * 9 5	29	Launches a form of Debug Mode that displays 3 numbers on screen. The first number seems to be a count of certain objects that are loaded, the second number is unused and will always be 1, and the third number is the string test ID (pressing 0 will increment this number and the message displayed at the top of the screen with be changed to the string ID specified).

Debug Text

The game also has some debug text that is loaded to memory under certain conditions.

• "gameLogic load section: $level_id"
• "gameLogic loadEXTRA section: $level_id"
• "error reading binary: $unknown"
• "error in init specials $unknown"
• "num walls: $wall_count"
• "[GAMELOGIC] Cheat $cheat_id Triggered"
• "Cheat:$cheat_id, $unknown"
• "you've got $lives_count lives"
• "err: $unknown error in flipper collisions! $unknown"
• "dot: $unknown"
• "dx: $unknown"

Thumbs.db File

Due to an oversight, version 4.1.84 for Nokia (240x320) phones is quite a bit larger than others due to the inclusion of a Thumbs.db file (Microsoft Windows thumbnail archive) that contains compressed versions of the game's various graphical assets.