The cheat sites list some codes for Ford Racing 3, the 2005 Xbox and PS2 racing game. But they're bogus!

I found the real code. On the main menu:

• Hold Select (PS2) / Black (Xbox)

• Enter Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Down, Up, Right, Down, Up.

A voice says "Cheat activated" and all cars and challenges are unlocked. Check out the Substack post for details on how I used Ghidra to figure this out.

The UK-based developer and publisher Codemasters used to run a pay-per-minute phone hotline that gave out "bonus codes" for some of its games. The codes were tied to a player's "unique ID," and couldn't be shared.

The code hotline is no longer in operation. So is there any way to get bonus codes now? Answer: yes! I reverse engineered the generation scheme for four of the LMA Manager soccer sim games.

The earlier games use a custom obfuscation scheme to make codes from the player ID. The last game uses an RSA key to verify that codes were legitimately obtained. In the Substack article, I describe how I worked around both.

The January 5th edition of Rings of Saturn is on Yuna Remix, the adventure game from Hudson.

This game, like several others from Hudson, has special features that can be activated by using a particular controller – the SBOM Joycard. I've created a patch that allows access to Yuna Remix's bonus mode with a normal controller.

Furthermore, Yuna Remix has a hidden debug mode with lots of features. To my knowledge, it hasn't been documented before. The patch enables access to it, too.

Get the patch at SegaXtreme and see my full writeup on Substack!