M A S T E R O F M O N S T E R S (Sega Genesis Version) A Few Words From A Devoted Fan On March 18th In The Year Of Our Lord 1998 INTRODUCTION ------------ Master of Monsters is one of my all time favorite games. It is the only strategy game where your characters keep "growing" until they die. Other games like Military Madness only let your characters "grow" during 1 level, then they lose all of their experience. RTS games like Red Alert overlook this aspect entirely (which is good for fast fun gaming, but they could have put something into the single player games...) My ultimate goal when playing this game is to develope as many "sandbagger" monsters as possible to fight in the final level of the campains, and to have a few level 4 monsters as well (King Dragon/Taipan.) By "sandbagger" I am talking about characters that are on the VIRGE of promotion (1 or 2 xp points away.) There's nothing like whipping out a bunch of these bad boys and laughing when they engage in battle, knowing that no matter how much damage they take, they are about to be "reborn" into a superior form. My favorite being a Fire Dragon on the virge. I mean, this guy is pretty bad-ass as it is, then suddenly he IS Mr. Bad Ass. It's like a game within a game! Carefully selecting which monsters to fight in battles, you are able to make long range plans for your little minions. I actually have a notebook where I have recorded my "table" of monsters at the beginning of the final battle of the campain. I have recorded 7 of my campain battles (meaning I have played through an entire campain 7 times.) Every time I play this game,I try to end up with a stronger set of monsters for the final battle (basically making the last battle a walk in the park.) My ONLY complaint about this wonderful game is the randomness of damage inflicted when fighting (in other words, monsters don't always hit their targets 100% of the time.) To me this RUINS the game! How can you possibly plan a perfect victory when you aren't even sure if your monsters are going to hit the target monster at all??? They could have made a much better hit system. Needless to say, I was very pleased that I discovered a "work-around" fix for this. The very first time I played MOM, I noticed that if you just loaded a game then in the very first fight your monster would hit 100% of the time. (See my letter to VG&CE at the end of this document.) What this boils down to is saving your game before EVERY fight, then if you are not happy with the results, simply reset, load the saved game, and hit your target 100%. (It is important to note that the enemy will also hit back 100%. The only exception to this is when the percentage of hitting is 40% or below -- then only 2 out of 3 attacks get through.) After years of serving me well, the battery of my MOM cartridge finally died. It was truely a sad day as it contained my best ending lineup. The funeral ceremony brought many gamers together, creating the first ever battery martyr. Many gamers still pay their respects to THE MOM battery. The other day I got bored with Team Fortress and Red Alert (the only two games I currently enjoy playing as of 03-98.) I decided to do a quick web search and see if Toshiba-EMI had any plans for future Master Of Monster games. I was deeply shocked to learn that a Japanese Import for the Playstation called Master of Monsters: Neo Generations exsisted! I have ordered a copy and eagerly await its arrival as I write this (not looking forward to the game being in Japanese though as I can't read a word...) While waiting I decided I should gear-up for it by playing the Genesis version of MOM. I was about to begin my quest when I decided that I really didn't want to do it. I mean, I had already accomplished my goal of making the "perfect" line-up for the final battle. I hit a few web sites and downloaded the latest Genesis emulator I could find (Genecyst.) I was really impressed with the performance of this emulator! The GUI was very user-friendly! After toying with it for a bit, I discovered the "states". (Saving and loading an exact moment in the game.) I also noticed that Genecyst also handled battery games by creating a save game file. I don't know about you, but I have always wanted to somehow cheat at this game. (Another one of those "if you can't have it, you really want it" things.) Sure it defeats the entire purpose of playing the game, but hey, I have already MASTERED Master Of Monsters. There's nothing left to do but the impossible (read: cheat.) The Genesis trainer scene of course overlooked MOM, as did GameGenie and every other cheating utility in exsistance. And there are no cheat codes that I know of (i'm talking CHEAT codes, not hidden music codes.) But now that the game is on my PC, i have resources at my fingertips! So I busted out with my favorite hex editor, Game Guru (made for cheating!) My first attempt was to modify the saved game. Low and behold, the bastards put a CRC check on the saved game file, and I couldn't figure it out. That's when I decided to edit the saved state files created by Genecyst. After finding various data locations and changing them, I was very happy to see that the changes worked! CHEATING FUN ------------ Some of the things you can do with this info: 1) Give the enemy MORE magic points, allowing him to make more/stronger monsters and attack you more often with magic! 2) Extend the number of turns (up to 52.) Now you can really "milk" the bastard for more monsters which gives you more chances to gain the much needed experience points. 3) Upgrade his monsters so that you have more of a challenge. The things you will most likely do with this info: 1) Take away ALL of the enemy magic points. This will cause him to do absolutely ZILCH (because that's about what you can do with no magic.) 2) Create an army from hell. (Hmm, let me have 10 King Dragons, 5 Taitans, and a few Amazons, TO GO!) 3) Turn his own monsters against him. (Gee, look at all the monsters that you just created... I wish they were mine... Hell, now they are!) 4) Give yourself an ungodly amount of Magic Points. 5) Create an ARMY of "sandbaggers". A bunch of Fire Dragons with 255 xp can strike the fear of god into any computer adversary. 6) After all your monsters have moved, change their status letting them move again! Change the enemy status to already moved! Take one monster and just keep moving him around, killing everything in his path. 7) Ruin the damn game! Let's face it, once you have this power at your fingertips, it's very hard not to abuse it. I suggest you try playing the game differently at this point. 1) Try to see how fast you can bum rush the fool. Try taking him out EARLY in the game instead of milking him for experience (since unlimited xp is now just a hex edit away...) 2) Play some 3 on 1. That's right, take on all 3 of the boys and laugh your ass off while you crush them. 3) Let the computer play itself, but give one of them a huge advantage in monsters, the other lots of magic points, ect. 4) Let the computer gather his forces for a few moves, then start playing. (In other words, give him a big headstart.) 5) Delete this cheat and forget you ever heard of it! Play the game it was meant to be played! Then when you get bored, find this cheat again. HEX LOCATIONS IN THE GENECYST EMULATOR'S SAVE STATE (USING GAME GURU) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Campain 1 Locations for the first map: (other maps/campain locations are pretty close to these locations.) 17801.....Current Turn Number 17803.....Number Of Turns 17822.....Your Magic Points 17824.....Computer's Magic Points 19576.....Beginning Of Character Data 00 02 00 27 00 13 00 01 00 00 00 64 00 00 03 81 00 00 00 = Empty 02 = Turn Status.......02 indicates you can still move/fight. 03 cannot. 00 = Empty 27 = X Location........Creature's X location on the map. 00 = Empty 13 = Y Location........Creature's Y location on the map. 00 = Empty 01 = Creature Type.....You can put any creature you like here. 00 = Empty 00 = Blue Is Owner.....You can change ownership of any creature. (Total<=30) 00 = Empty 64 = Current HP........I suggest entering FF here. Towers negate effect. 00 = Empty 00 = Current XP........I suggest FF UNLESS it's a max level creature. 03 = Graphic Type A....Creature's Graphic Representation. 81 = Graphic Type B....Creature's Graphic Representation. 00 = Empty 00 = Empty (The above information is from Campain 1, map 1.) COLOR VALUES ------------ 00.....Blue Ownership 01.....Red Ownership 02.....Green Ownership 03.....Yellow Ownership CREATURE VALUES --------------- 01.....Daimyou 02.....Wizard 03.....Sorcerer 04.....Darklord 05.....Summoner 06.....Daimyou (Glitch) 07.....Fire (Elemental) 08.....Water (Elemental) 09.....Air (Elemental) 0A.....Earth (Elemental) (All of the above have no/limited movement.) 0B.....Angel 0C.....Arch-A 0D.....Great-A 0E.....Demon 0F.....Arch-D 10.....Great-D 11.....Dragon L (Orange) 12.....Dragon L (Blue) 13.....Dragon C (Green) 14.....Dragon C (Brown) 15.....Dragon N (Grey) 16.....Flame-D 17.....Fire-D 18.....Frost-D 19.....Ice-D 1A.....Sky-D 1B.....Air-D 1C.....Dark-D 1D.....Death-D 1E.....Silver-D 1F.....Gold-D 20.....Roman 21.....Carthago 22.....Caeser 23.....Warrior 24.....Attacker 25.....Crasher 26.....Soldier 27.....Fighter 28.....Crusader 29.....Unicorn 2A.....Tricorn 2B.....Pegasus 2C.....Mono-P 2D.....Wraith 2E.....Dark-W 2F.....Black-W 30.....Troll 31.....Giant 32.....Collosus 33.....Cyclops 34.....Icegiant 35.....Firbolg 36.....Golem 37.....Stone-G 38.....Iron-G 39.....Minotaur 3A.....Gorgon 3B.....Sky-G 3C.....Loc 3D.....Phoenix 3E.....Griffin 3F.....Hippo-G 40.....Chimera 41.....Sphinx 42.....Lizard 43.....Twinhead 44.....Hydra 45.....Marmaid 46.....Sirene 47.....Octopus 48.....Kraken 49.....Serpent 4A.....Big-S 4B.....Cocoon 4C.....Guardian 4D.....King-D 4E.....Amazon 4F.....Musha 50.....Mage 51.....Valkyrie 52.....Taitan --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MP3 Notes: ---------- Yes I got soooooooooooo caught up in the Nastalgia that is MOM, that I just HAD to make some MP3s. If you have ever played the game, you know a few things, such as: 1) The music rocks. 2) The music repeats endlessly with seemless looping. For best possible effect, use my playlist, or set your mp3 player on auto- repeat. I created the following mp3s: (Master Of Monsters) Intro Music (Master Of Monsters) Select Music (Master Of Monsters) Background Music 01 (Master Of Monsters) Background Music 02 (Master Of Monsters) Background Music 03 (Master Of Monsters) Background Music 04 (Master Of Monsters) Background Music 05 (Master Of Monsters) Background Music 06 They take up a little over 12 megs. Worth every byte! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- VG&CE LETTER ------------ My letter to VG&CE which never got published... This was the platform era. Nobody gave a rat's ass about strategy games back then... February 7, 1992 ATTN: Easter Egg Hunt (VG&CE) I think your magazine is the best! I really love the tips section, and I'm hoping that my tip is good enough the grace the pages... I've been playing Master Of Monsters by Renovation for about a month now. I just can't get enough of the game! My only gripe is that I haven't read any game tips for the sucker yet! Well, I found a little jewel that can give the player a definite edge. While the game is strategy based, the creators saw fit to add a "chance" element to it by laying down the law that says a monster is able to do such and such damage to another monster, IF the attack makes contact. For instance, say I had an Angel with 30 HP going up against a Serpent with only 10 HP left. At short range I can hit him 2 times at 2 HP damage a shot, and at long range I can get him 2 times at 6 HP a shot. Because the Serpent can't fight me at long range, I go for this option. Well, let's say my first shot hits, but my second shot misses! That sucks! If I would have hit him both times, the Serpent would be dusted! Well I found a way that GUARANTEES every hit connects! I had to set the Genesis Console next to me since I found myself reaching for the "magic" reset button every time one of my monsters missed a punch. Master Of Monsters (GENESIS) GUARANTEED HITS! To guarantee that your monster or summoned elemental force hits your opponent every time during one encounter, simply save the game, hit the reset switch on your Genesis console, then continue the game. Now you are guaranteed a 100% hit rate against your foe, for the first encounter only! This comes in real handy when fighting a Master near the end of the level. Use your strong monsters and get them to connect with their shots every time by using this method. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- You have reached the end of this fine document. Is there more to this tale? What about the playstation version? Did I leave the iron on? As I finish this, I still have not received my copy of Master Of Monsters: Neo Generations for the Sony Playstation. Of course the main problem being that I stayed up all fucking night and missed the UPS delivery because I was dead asleep. If the Playstation game is any good, expect to see another file about it. If it sucks, then you won't see anything. Questions? Comments? Something you feel the need to share with me? anthrox666@hotmail.com http://members.xoom.com/mom_me/index.htm Another Work Of Art By Dennis Miller ---------------------------------------------------------------------------