Stormlord was originally published for the ZX Spectrum and other 8-bit PCs by Hewson Consultants in 1989. A Genesis version, produced by RazorSoft and Punk Development, followed in 1991.
The console version of Stormlord is noticeably different from its PC counterparts in one striking way: there’s no nudity. In the game, you play as the Viking hero StormLord, rescuing fairy princesses from a dastardly antagonist. StormLord doesn’t wear much clothing, but the fairy princesses are entirely naked in the original artwork. In the Genesis edition, they’re covered up (albeit minimally).
In an excellent interview from 2019 in Gaming Alexandria, Genesis version programmer Kevin Seghetti said this about the game:
[We] did put a cheat code system in the game, so that we could release codes after the game came out (a method to keep getting your game mentioned in the magazines of the time). One of the codes removes the clothes from the fairies, revealing the original artwork. Razorsoft specified this as well. I vaguely recall we may have removed that particular cheat code before we shipped.
Did they actually remove this cheat code? No – it remained in the retail cartridge. I found it in the game data, along with another cheat code that managed to stay secret for the last 35 years. Details on these new codes and how they work are below!
Reveal the original artwork
To use the first new code, start a new game. When you’re in control of StormLord, press Start to pause the action. Then enter this sequence: Down (x1), C (x6), B (x2), C (x3), Left (x1), A (x10)
If you got it right, you’ll be taken back to the title screen. The next game you start will use the original artwork.
In the first section of Level 1, there’s a statue of a princess that normally has a bit of clothing. After entering the code, this statue will be fully unclothed.
These statues are nude in a sort of tasteful, artistic way. You wouldn’t bat an eye at one if you saw it at a museum.
How about the fairy princesses that you rescue from bubbles during gameplay? Their nudity is a bit less refined. Here’s how they normally look:
And here’s how they look without their lingerie:
It’s not all that scandalous, though. Given the resolution of the Genesis, the difference between the clothed and nude sprites is only a handful of pixels. This game predated the Videogame Rating Council and Entertainment Software Rating Board, so it didn’t get slapped with a “mature audiences only” label. But the back of the box said it was “suggested for ages 14 & above,” and that sounds about right to me.
Show the programmer’s credit
For the second new code, start a new game and pause once again. Then enter this sequence: Up (x1), B (x4), Down (x3), Up (x2), A (x3), B (x2)
If you got it right, the game will seem to restart. Normally, the copyright screen looks like this:
With the code applied, it looks like this:
That is, it’s signed by the programmer who was quoted in the Gaming Alexandria article above, Kevin Seghetti.
Seghetti has been interviewed about his time programming Genesis games a few times – check out this one from Sega-16 and this one from Game Developer Research Group for some of his comments about Stormlord.
Technical details
Stormlord recognizes five cheats on its pause screen. Three are well known (see Sega Retro for details), presumably because they appeared in magazines. Each one is represented in the game data like this:
| Address | Button | Count | Meaning |
|----------|--------|-------|-----------|
| 00056428 | 20 | 06 | C (x6) |
| 0005642a | 10 | 02 | B (x2) |
| 0005642c | 20 | 03 | C (x3) |
| 0005642e | 04 | 01 | Left (x1) |
| 00056430 | 40 | 0a | A (x10) |
| 00056432 | ff | 00 | End |Each sequence is stored as a table of two-byte pairs: the button value followed by the number of times it must be pressed. As with most Genesis games, Up=0x01, Down=0x02, Left=0x04, Right=0x08, B=0x10, C=0x20, A=0x40.
The table above shows the original artwork cheat. But it’s missing its initial button, Down. That’s because the game chooses which table to examine based on its initial button. Here’s the disassembly that implements this check:
check_down_cheat_0005626a:
; Check whether the most recent button press was Down (0x2)
cmp.b #0x2,D2b
; If it wasn't, move on to the next cheat.
bne.b check_up_cheat_00056282
; If it was, load the button sequence for the original artwork cheat.
movea.l #0x56428,A0
; Store the function that will apply the original artwork cheat.
move.l #0x56334,(0x00ff7f6c).l
; Check for the sequence.
bra.b check_sequence_000562c8The sequence checking code is rather unwieldy, so I won’t reproduce it here. This is a sketch of how it works:
- Each sequence’s first button value gets stored at
00ff7f76. - Its repeat count gets stored at
00ff7f77. - The function that applies the cheat effect gets stored at
00ff7f6c. - Each successful entry decrements the number of remaining repeats.
- Once that reaches zero, the next button’s value and repeat count get stored.
- When the button value is -1 (or
0xff), the application function gets called.
The function that applies the original artwork cheat effect sets the 16-bit value at 00ff02aa to 1 and then restarts the game. The function that applies the programmer’s credit cheat loads the new graphics before showing the copyright screen, then proceeds with the game’s normal initialization.
Entering the second code has the side effect of undoing the first one’s effect, so you can’t have both Seghetti’s signature and nude fairy princesses in the same playthrough. Decisions, decisions.
Outro
A genuine nude code! This isn’t the first one I’ve found – see the post on my blog on Knockout Kings (PlayStation) for details about another. And for more on hidden content in games that would have raised eyebrows at the ratings board, see the my posts on E.T. Interplanetary Mission (PlayStation) and Blam! Machinehead (PlayStation).
Many thanks to Michael Stearns for pointing me to the Gaming Alexandria article that discusses the possibility of a hidden cheat code in Stormlord.
