Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance
Also known as: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dragon Lance: Heroes of the Lance (Title screen) Developers: Natsume Publishers: Pony Canyon (JP), FCI (US) Platform: NES Released in JP: March 8, 1991 Released in US: January 1991 This game has unused music. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select. This game has regional differences.

Heroes of the Lance is a dungeon crawler of sorts (a port of the Atari ST original) that seems to have been very sloppily and hastily put-together. Though the concept is interesting, the execution was poor.

Disabled Debug

Game Genie code AESNNYPA re-enables a simple debug mode.

Map Select

Hold Down on Controller 2 at the title screen, and the text "MAP No. 00" will appear with a hex map number. While still holding Down, press A to increase the map number by 0x01 or B to increase the map number by 0x10.

Map Number Display

During the game, press A on Controller 2 to display the current map number and some other variables.

Unused Music

Track 8 on the NSF is a very short, unused piece of music that seems like it was intended for the "Game Over" and/or "Bad Ending" scenes, both of which are curiously silent.

(Source: Zophar.net)

Regional Differences

Menu

In the North American version, the locations of the "Take" and "Score" options were oddly swapped.

Japan	US

Below is a translation of the Famicom version text:

Hero Select        Give
Magic User Spells  Drop
Cleric Spells      Score
Use                Save
Take               Load