Questions

General

Can you save your progress?

Full version only. You can save your progress through 6-digit passwords, you can check your current password by going into the automap. The password updates at the beginning of every stage and on every checkpoint.

Can you adjust the difficulty?

Yes, there's a difficulty setting in the Options screen. On top of that, you can also adjust the game speed on the fly. The Features page in the site describes this and more features.

Arkagis Revolution doesn't work on one of my consoles

Please contact us and try to include as many details as possible (including exact model as accurately as you can, also take a pic of the screen if possible).

If the problem is something like the video output going out (as if somebody was pulling out the cable), you should look into doing servicing instead. Those consoles are old and failing capacitors will cause all sorts of problems, and modern homebrew cartridges may expose the problems earlier than older cartridges from the '90s.

If the game seems to work but crashes completely at random (including blue screens with "ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION" and "ADDRESS ERROR"), it's possible the cartridge itself is damaged and may need a replacement. In this case it'll likely break on every console, however.

How does the speedrun timer work?

The speedrun timer counts every frame even when the game is seemingly frozen (e.g. during fade out). It resets when the screen fades out completely after selecting Start (or entering a password) and accounts for the speed difference between 60Hz and 50Hz consoles.

The timer will wrap around after 828 days, 12 hours, 6 minutes and 28 seconds.

Are there cheats?

Full version only. Yes, Arkagis Revolution has some cheats!

Does it work with Sonic & Knuckles?

Yes. If it doesn't work please contact us or the store you bought it from.

Purchases

Important: purchase questions not specific to this game have been moved to the main site's FAQ page, please make sure to check there as well.

Will there be ROMs available for download?

Check Arkagis Revolution on itch.io!

Why aren't there regional variants?

We don't want to infringe on Sega's trademarks, so it's in our best interests to not make boxes that look like theirs (and they certainly are using the box design in recent times, as shown by the physical release of Sonic Mania and the use of the designs for new covers in the Mega Drive Mini for games that were missing one). They don't issue new licenses for them, and there isn't any point playing risky when it isn't required to function.

Some stores may still provide multiple variants of the box.

How long is the manual?

28 pages (including cover). It includes details on how to play Arkagis Revolution, some backstory on characters and such, and instructions on how to build the Saturn keyboard adapter.

Technical aspects

How does the rotation work?

It's a lot of sprites. It's much faster to move around sprites than to try rendering a rotated field in the background. The downside is that the sprite limits get in the way, which is why the visible area is restricted and scenery is so sparse.

Sprites usually come in steps of 11.25°, but large objects (including walls) are made out of multiple sprites that move independently and hence it looks much smoother.

What's the sprite limit?

Old consoles didn't draw everything to a framebuffer (because that required too much memory), instead they generated the graphics on the fly as they scanned the screen. This is great for framerate and memory usage, but it meant that if they didn't have time to process all sprites they would drop the excess instead of slowing down.

In our case, there are three sprites limits: 80 sprites on screen, 20 sprites per scanline, and 320px per scanline (including transparent pixels). These limits prevent Arkagis Revolution from lining up too many sprites horizontally, which is why the viewport is restricted.

How much space does voice acting take up?

Around 800KB. There's around 76 seconds worth of voice acting, however the game uses a system where cutscenes are built out of multiple sub-phrases that are strung together, so the total scenes add up to much longer.

Voices are stored uncompressed (raw 8-bit) at 10650Hz. They could have been compressed, but there's a lot of free ROM space and it wasn't worth risking to break the sound driver.

Controls

Can you change the controls?

Yes, the Controls screen lets you change the button mappings for controllers and keyboard and flip the mouse buttons, as well as let you adjust things like the speed at which your ship turns around and making your ship shoot automatically without having to press the fire button.

The diagonals don't work!

Don't use Gens with an XInput controller under Windows 10. Other emulators should work fine.

What's the Mode button?

It's a button present in most 6-button controllers. Depending on the model, it's either the right "shoulder" button (where R would be) or in the middle (next to the Start button).

Some clone 6-button controllers lack a Mode button. You can still access the map by pausing the game and selecting it with the D-pad.

Do I need the keyboard to play with the mouse?

No, you can use it together with a controller too.

The keyboard/mouse doesn't work with my Mega Sg.

Enable Passthrough Mode in the system settings.

How do I connect the keyboard?

Arkagis Revolution supports the Saturn keyboard (or the NetLink keyboard adapter), but the plug shape is different than what the Mega Drive takes. In order to use the keyboard you need to get a passive adapter that takes a Saturn controller and has a Mega Drive plug on the other side.

If you want to build your own adapter, you can check the controller pinouts at Plutiedev (connect the lines with the same names on both sides of the cable). Instructions will be included in the manual as well.

How do I use the keyboard in an emulator?

As of writing, only BlastEm supports the Saturn keyboard. Press Esc to open the menu, then go to Settings, System, IO Port 1 Device and select Saturn Keyboard (you may as well also set the mouse in port 2).

To use the keyboard, press the right Ctrl key to "capture" the keyboard (press it again when you want to use BlastEm's shortcuts). If it doesn't work, quit the emulator and reopen it.

Remember to change it back before playing another game!