The Flintstones: The Treasure of Sierra Madrock

The Flintstones: The Treasure of Sierra Madrock
Developer: Taito Publisher: Taito Platform: SNES Released in JP: August 12, 1994 Released in US: March 1994 Released in EU: June 23, 1994 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has a hidden level select. This game has anti-piracy features.

To do: * Document the prototype Find out if there is another way to enable cheat mode (such as a password).

The Flintstones: The Treasure of Sierra Madrock is yet another in a series of corny rock-themed puns.

Developer Message

At 0x6D6B2 is a version number and a copyright message featuring Kennosuke Suemura's name, who is one of the game's composers.

Ver1.27 Copyright K.Suemura

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Anti-Piracy

Normal	Pirated

The game uses the SRAM area for various portions of gameplay. The game normally does not have SRAM, so this memory region gets updated properly and gameplay runs normally. If the game happens to have SRAM added (as easily observed in a cartridge copier), the game will slow down many core mechanics of gameplay to about half the original speed, which includes Fred and Barney's movement speed. However, the timer on each level will still count down normally, making the game much harder if not outright impossible to complete. This even affects the map screen and the results screen at the end of each stage, with the latter being out of sync to the music as a result. Although the game itself does not contain any innate SRAM checks, the usage of the SRAM region this way ends up creating an unintentional anti-piracy protection. This proved problematic when the game's prototype first came out, as it was dumped with SRAM installed.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Cheat Mode

Using the Pro Action Replay code 85B7E780 (US version) enables a debug/cheat mode of sorts. Each section below assumes that this mode is active.

Options Menu

When the "press start button" text appears, hold down L + R and press Up, X, Down, B, Left, Y, Right, and A. A sound will play to confirm you've entered the code correctly. Now the options menu is expanded with several new options.

Ingame buttons

During the game, press any of the following on controller 2:

• A: enters/exits the current space without ending your turn.
• B: automatically takes you to the area or stage (if you're already at stage 5, you'll just end up at stage 5 again).
• R: start the race against Rockhead.
• Start: toggles unlimited time (regular stages only).

Pause buttons

Also, there are 3 button sequences for controller 1 which can be activated while the game is paused (they must be done in this order). The currently playing song/sound will change to indicate that the code was input successfully.

• Hold Down, hold Right, release Down, press A: unlimited time, 99 lives, 100 clams, maximum hearts.
• Press Right, hold Down, hold Right, press A: temporary invincibility.
• Hold Down, hold Left, release Down, press B: effect unknown.
  • also sets bit 0004 of $1F79 (effect unknown).

Debug display

When bit 0002 of $1F79 is set, this display appears on the map screen, showing the values of the eight 16-bit words between $1F7B and $1F89. What each one represents is unknown, though the first one always seems to be set to 350E when leaving a stage.

There is no apparent way to enable this feature without manually editing RAM.

(Source: Original TCRF research)