In 2017, Treasure founder Masato Maegawa recalled adding a cheat code to the 1993 Genesis game McDonald’s Treasureland Adventure: you could enter B-A-C-A to make the Sega logo explode. He put this in out of frustration - the code spells out "baka," Japanese for "stupid" - because he kept getting notes on the game's content.

This doesn't work in the final game, however. Did Treasure think better of shipping it?

I think some wires got crossed - the code did ship, but not in McDonald’s Treasureland Adventure. I found it in the 1994 game Dynamite Headdy!

Details are on Substack.

The October 23 edition of Rings of Saturn covers Scooby-Doo! Unmasked for GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox.

Cheat sites tend to list a "100 extra mubber" code for this game. But it only really works on Xbox. What gives? I took a look at the game data to see what was going on, and in doing so found:

• The real "100 extra mubber" codes.

• A new invincibility code

• A code that replenishes Scooby's health

Details are on Substack!

It's time for part three of my Shaq Fu miniseries. The Genesis and Super NES versions of the game both had a hidden "instant win" cheat. The question naturally arises: is it there in the Game Gear port?

The 8-bit version of the game was programmed by Tiertex rather than Delphine Software. But they did implement the cheat! And two additional ones. All three are now documented - check out the Substack article for details.

Phantasm was the name given to the Saturn port of Phantasmagoria, the controversial PC horror game. It was released exclusively in Japan, and spanned a record 8 discs.

I found a cheat code for this game that unlocks three bonus movies on disc 7. One is a music video featuring the bassist from the band X Japan, another is a making-of documentary about the PC game, and the third is race queen Fumika Suzuki's sizzle reel.

Details are on Substack!