https://32bits.substack.com/p/under-the-microscope-the-lost-world Rings of Saturn Rings of Saturn SubscribeSign in Share this post [https] Rings of Saturn Rings of Saturn Under the microscope: The Lost World - Jurassic Park (Saturn, PlayStation) Copy link Facebook Email Notes More Under the microscope: The Lost World - Jurassic Park (Saturn, PlayStation) Rerouting the encryption May 07, 2025 3 Share this post [https] Rings of Saturn Rings of Saturn Under the microscope: The Lost World - Jurassic Park (Saturn, PlayStation) Copy link Facebook Email Notes More 1 Share In this edition: * I examined the password system for the 1997 game The Lost World: Jurassic Park in Ghidra, the reverse engineering tool. * This allowed me to replicate it in Python and uncover some previously-unknown cheat codes. They enable a stage select screen, an invincibility mode, and two photo galleries. * I also found hundreds of thousands of valid passwords (with duplicate effects) for then PlayStation version. Read on for the details! Here's a video showing some of the new stuff: --------------------------------------------------------------------- Intro [https] According to EGM 93, Dreamworks Interactive was very invested in making this adaptation of the Jurassic Park sequel successful, and spent lots of time and resources on its graphics and animation. Their team focused on the PlayStation game and farmed out the Saturn port to Sega and Appaloosa Interactive. Both the PlayStation and Saturn versions have you input 12 character "DNA sequences" as passwords. The character choices match the controller buttons for the console you're playing: Square, X, Circle, and Triangle on PlayStation; A, X, Y, and Z on Saturn. [https] The Saturn buttons seem more like DNA letters than the PlayStation ones, don't they? Cheat code repositories have had passwords listed for both versions of the game since the 1990s. But they don't match up -- you can't translate Square to A, Circle to B, or Triangle to C, for example. What's going on? I decided to take a look. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Saturn version: technical details When you're on the Password screen, the code loaded at 06071760 (NTSC-U version) checks for button presses. Those get stored to an input buffer, and then checked for validity after you enter the 12th character. The input buffer starts with the value 060FFB74 (this looks like a pointer to the Saturn HWRAM area, but it's not). Each letter flips some of the buffer's bits by applying an OR mask followed by an AND mask. The mask bits depend on what position the letter is in. Here's the OR mask table: [https] OR masks. Columns are buttons, rows are positions. And the AND mask table: [https] AND masks. Columns are buttons, rows are positions. After applying the masks to each character position, the resultant bits are then validated by comparing them to 4-byte substrings (encoded with ASCII, except for the underscores, which are zeros) of this phrase: THREEDIRTYDWARVESRULEZ GREGCORTHAGTACONIC199____AxCvUkSngGeGREGE Three Dirty Dwarves! This is another Appaloosa Interactive game whose password system I cracked in a previous article. [https] The password key's "Greg" is a character in Three Dirty Dwarves All we need to do is check all of the 12 character strings that use A, X, Y, and Z (16,777,216 of them) to see which ones are valid. I wrote this script to do the job. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Saturn version: results Here's the full list of passwords recognized by the Saturn version: AXXY AYXY YYXY: Hunter gallery AYXY XXZX ZZYY: Compy gallery AYXY YYZY AYXY: Ending movie AYYY XYXY YZYY: T-Rex enable XAXY YYYY ZXYY: Unlock all stages XXXX XXXX XXXX: Easy mode XZXY XYYY ZXYY: Raptor gallery YXXY XYYY AYXY: T-Rex gallery YYXY AYXY YYXY: Invincibility* YYXY ZXYY XZXY: Hunter enable YYXY ZYYY ZXYY: Prey enable YZAX YZAX YXAX: Stage select* YZXY ZAXY AAXY: Prey gallery ZAZY AXYY AZZY: Full arcade gallery* ZXYY YZXY XYXY: Raptor enable ZYAY AXXY XZAY: Limited Arcade gallery* Four of these seem to be new! The Invincibility code, as you might have guessed from the name, makes you invincible. It also displays some text that says DEBUG:INV text on the Options screen when it's active: [https] The Stage select code enables a screen that's different from the one in the Options menu: [https] The Full arcade gallery and Limited arcade gallery codes has pictures of another game called The Lost World: Jurassic Park (this one was produced by Sega). The limited gallery has 4 images; the full one shows 8. [https] [https] Did anybody know about these? As far as I can tell, this has remained secret for 28 years. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The PlayStation version: technical details The PlayStation version's password system works differently. Instead of there being one password for each effect, there are many passwords that encode the same effect. The game first encodes your button presses to numbers and stores them in an array: 00=Square, 01=X, 02=Circle, 03=Triangle. Then it computes a checksum: the 6th and 10th bytes are combined and checked against a combination of the other bytes. If they match, the password is good. The rest of the password encodes your progress in the game and which settings you changed in the Options menu. If you include all of the options and allow for duplicates, there are 380,160 valid passwords. Here are valid ones for each effect that aren't published anywhere (to my knowledge). S is for Square, C is for Circle, X is for X, and T is for Triangle: SSSS SSSC SSCS : Play as Hunter SSSS SSSC STCX : Hunter gallery SSSS SSSC XSCT : Play as Raptor SSSS SSSC XCCX : Raptor gallery SSSS SSSC TSCX : Play as Compy SSSS SSST TTCX : Compy gallery SSSS SSCS SSTT : Prey gallery SSSS SSCS SCTX : Play as Prey SSSS SSCS XSTC : T-Rex gallery SSSS SSCS XCTS : Play as T-Rex The code I used to generate these is here. There's also the Level Select password, which needs to be entered three times. It's tracked separately, and doesn't use the checksum system: SXCT TXSC TCXS: Level select --------------------------------------------------------------------- Outro For previous adventures in cracking password systems, see my articles on Three Dirty Dwarves, Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, and Burning Rangers. Stay tuned for more reverse engineering articles! Upcoming topics: * A candy-themed 3D platformer for PlayStation * A prototype build of a Saturn game * A candy-themed action game for GameCube [https] Logo by Ashlyn Anstee 3 Share this post [https] Rings of Saturn Rings of Saturn Under the microscope: The Lost World - Jurassic Park (Saturn, PlayStation) Copy link Facebook Email Notes More 1 Share Discussion about this post CommentsRestacks User's avatar [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] gilbert guerra's avatar gilbert guerra 2d Liked by Bo Once again, the Wizard Bo did a fantastic discovery. Thanks ! If you don't know what game you could try to find secrets for : Back Guiner Suikoden Black Mateix Super robot taisen F Vatlva Only my suggestion of course Expand full comment Reply Share TopLatestDiscussions No posts Ready for more? [ ] Subscribe (c) 2025 Bo Privacy [?] Terms [?] Collection notice Start writingGet the app Substack is the home for great culture Share Copy link Facebook Email Notes More This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts