Panzer Dragoon Saga is a RPG released for the Sega Saturn in 1998. It was the third Panzer Dragoon game to be released and so far it remains the only game in the series that is not a rail shooter. Like the other Panzer Dragoon games on the Saturn, it was developed by Sega’s internal Team Andromeda development studio. The team disbanded after Saga’s release. [Infos from Wikipedia]
As we can read in an interesting article from The Will of the Ancients, in the early screenshots of the game we can see a beta HUD, unfinished environments, changes in the character placements and other minor differences. Also, in this other article we can read that some unused text is still hidden in the code: “If you put one of the Panzer Dragoon Saga game discs into your PC and open certain files in a text editor, you’ll be able to read the script for the game, which is all stored as normal text. […] However, virtually every section of text contains some lines of script that don’t appear in the finished game; there are bits of conversations that don’t take place, descriptions of items that don’t exist, and other odd things besides.”
In May 2008 Hidden Palace, thanks to donations from The Will of the Ancients community, released various beta versions of the game (from 1996 and 1997) with some differences like a removed Dermot’s Ranch camp area, missing Village of Cainus, different controls & english translation.
Also, Evilhamwizard was able to find a debug menu in the Panzer Dragoon Saga beta (Sept 16 1997 build):
Now, this appears to be the only debug that’s activated for the moment. For some reason, the battle system, the world map (I guess) system, and the menu/title screens don’t have debugs. I went though many of the PRG files, and it appears that some boss battles have special debugs enabled. But I’m not sure. The game DOES have a map select, battle select, and a sound test that’s all on the title screen (the files for the sound test still exist in this build as well as the final, I believe).[…]
Now onto the debug itself. Like I said, this debug in particular can only be loaded on a FIELD map. To get the debug to show up, however, is easy and only requires a second controller (you could probably use one controller and just switch ports). To enable it, you have to press START first to get it to show up on the second controller. Then you have to move the dpad a little to highlight what you want. After pressing start for the first time, you can then use the R button to call up the debug screen with the second controller as well. To select anything from the list, I believe I used the A button. To mess with the variables, ABC on the second controller decrease the values while XYZ increase them.
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