Debug Mode
Debug mode is a set of debugging and testing features used by Camelot Software Planning during development of both GBA Golden Sun games, which was left mostly intact in the retail versions of both games. The main features of debug mode are the ability to walk through walls, to warp to any map in the game including the Debug Rooms, and to view and modify any of the internal flags used by the game to keep track of story events.
The same debug mode also exists in Mario Golf: Advance Tour and Mario Tennis: Power Tour, as both of those games use the engine from the GBA Golden Sun games.
Accessing Debug Mode
Debug mode is disabled during normal gameplay and can only be enabled using RAM editing or a cheating device such as a GameShark or Action Replay. To enable debug mode, a non-zero byte must be written to a specific variable in RAM, which differs between games:
| Game | Address | CodeBreaker/ GameShark SP |
GameShark Advance/ Action Replay |
Action Replay MAX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Golden Sun | 03001F54 | 33001F54 0001 | 0EDDE147 50586B97 | 643789F3 ECAB35BC |
| Golden Sun (German) | 03001F64 | 33001F64 0001 | 68B25EE9 E00CDCB7 | DFF8B768 783E7268 |
| Golden Sun: The Lost Age | 03001238 | 33001238 0001 | 00D3924F 333C8C91 | 1B8735DA 3C2202E5 |
| Mario Golf: Advance Tour | 03001280 | 33001280 0001 | 06BCC0CB 8164414E | 180AE2FD AEB6A90E |
| Mario Tennis: Power Tour | 03001334 | 33001334 0001 | D29C57FA C536EF57 | E2A6A78C A74439E8 |
Features
- Holding L allows the player to walk anywhere, including through solid objects. The player can even walk outside the bounds of the map, although the camera will not follow them there. This feature also works on the World Map, although it's awkward to use there since holding L will just zoom out the World Map without allowing the player to move. However, if L is pressed and held while in a menu, and then the menu is closed while still holding L, it will function properly.
- Pressing Start+Select at any time will freeze the game and enter frame-advance mode. In this mode, pressing A or B will advance the game forward by one frame at a time. Pressing Start will return the game to normal.
- Pressing L+R during a cutscene will enter fast-forward mode. All dialogue will be automatically skipped, massively speeding up the cutscene. Pressing L+R again will return the cutscene to normal.
- In battle, holding Start while opening the Status menu will display the enemies' stats instead of the player's. (All enemies will have Isaac's portrait and their class will be "NPC".)
- Three extra options are added to the Start menu: "Rough menu", "Debug menu", and "Restart quest". All three have an unused trash can icon, and none of them do anything when selected.
- On the file select screen, all files will display "(Continue from a Sanctum)" instead of the usual text. Loading a file will always start the player at the last-visited Sanctum, as if they had held L+Start.
Warp Menu
Pressing B+Start opens the warp menu, which allows the player to instantly warp to any map in the game including the Debug Rooms.
The top row controls the map ID, and the bottom row controls which warp ID within the map to warp to. Every map also has an internal name used by the developers which is displayed by this menu.
Flag Editor
Pressing B+Select opens the flag editor, which allows the player to view and edit all the flags used by the game to keep track of story events. The flags are split into 16 pages of 256 flags each, which can be navigated with L and R.
Palette Editor
Pressing L+Start opens the palette editor, which allows the player to view and edit all the background palettes currently in memory.
- The D-Pad changes which red, green, or blue value is currently selected, though it's somewhat hard to keep track of since the cursor is invisible.
- A and B increment and decrement the currently-selected value, respectively.
- L and R change which palette is currently being edited.
- Holding Start will cause the currently-selected color to flash black and white, which lets the user easily see where the color is used in-game. It also helps with the aforementioned invisble cursor.
- Select closes the menu. This also has the side effect of resetting the UI color to the default dark blue, but opening the Settings menu will restore what it was previously set to.
