GoldenEye’s hidden ZX Spectrum 48x emulator

Unbeknownst to the world, retail versions of GoldenEye contain a ZX Spectrum 48x emulator, merely lacking a program monitor and user access. This video displays the results of a nifty little patch to re-enable the content. In total, nine games are embedded. Each is mapped to keypresses on controller 3. The original access point couldn’t be determined, so now you load the games while on the folder select menu (menu 5).
c left Sabre Wulf
c right Atic Atac
c up Jetpac
c down Lunar Jetman
+ left Alien 8
+ right Gun Fright
+ up Underwurlde
+ down Knight Lore
A button Pssst
(default) Cookie

The video displays short sections from each of the games. (Forgot to map the A button, so Pssst won’t appear in this video.) The emulator is fully-compartmentilzed so you can leave, load another game, or play GoldenEye normally.

The emulator was a side-project of one of the programmers, experimentally inserted in the current game under production to see if Spectrum emulation on the N64 was possible. Access to it was removed before release, but the emulation code itself remained embedded, much like debug and devtool support, within a large chunk of assembly code. The patch, exclusively for the North American release (NGEE), is available here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php…

Don’t pirate ROMs! In most countries you can legally make your own backup copies and apply the patch to those. No direct links to ROMs of any kind, patched or otherwise. Respect the Fuzz!

+_+

Update:
Steve Ellis, who originally created the emulator, sent an email to clarify how the original Spectrum ROM was set up. Since it wasn’t included and the copyright has been lifted by Amstrad I’ve included the complete one with the patch. If there is any further issue I’ll reduce it to a copyright-unrestricted version.
Here’s the letter though, and be certain to check out Crash Lab. Really!

“Hi,
I see various posts about this on the web now. I thought I’d clarify the point about spec_rom.seg.rz – the contents of this file fill the bottom 16kb of the Spectrum’s memory. On the original Spectrum, the bottom 16kb would have included the whole operating system (the BASIC programming language, functions for loading from and saving to cassettes, etc.). Since the ROM is copyrighted we weren’t able to use it. However, some of the games that we were emulating wanted to call one or two Spectrum ROM functions. The solution to this was to create an empty ROM (99.9% filled with NOP’s), but with newly-created (copyright-free) replacements for the few short functions that the games needed to call. The games should run with this minimal replacement ROM.

BTW, if you’d like to send any people in the direction of @CrashLab or facebook.com/CrashLab, I’d be grateful. We’re going to release something later this year that hopefully should appeal to fans of “old-school” games.

Regards

Steve Ellis
Crash Lab

www.crashlab.co.uk
www.facebook.com/CrashLab
www.twitter.com/CrashLab

+_+

Check the thread at:
http://www.shootersforever.com/forums…
For Steve Ellis’s letter and a snippet debunking DK64 Spectrum emulation.

Also, check out Steve’s latest venture at Crash Lab. Expect some great stuff out of there!

5 thoughts on “GoldenEye’s hidden ZX Spectrum 48x emulator

  1. “don’t pirate roms” lol.. this stuff always makes me wonder whether it’s just a disclaimer or someone actually takes this stuff seriously. : )

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