Continuing off of yesterday’s post in which I detailed how to unlock Shin Megami Tensei II’s debug menu in its PS1 version, I’ve been tinkering around with Nocturne some more and after discovering that there was an Action Replay MAX code for the PAL version circulating around that unlocks an in-battle debug menu, I decided to tool around with other versions of the game and I think it’s pretty safe to say that you can unlock it in pretty much any version you’d like to play in addition to the PAL one, be it the pre-Maniax Japanese version, the US release, or the Japanese only Maniax Chronicles edition featuring Raidou! I’ve taken the liberty of “porting” the code to these other versions as it were so everyone can get in on the action. There are multiple ways of doing this, so let’s go over the different methods and then I’ll briefly describe what all this battle debug menu actually does.

Raw Codes (for using on real hardware, etc.)

Original, pre-Maniax Nocturne:

0052DCA4 00000001 US Nocturne:

0054E824 00000001

PAL Nocturne:

00428BA8 00000001

Maniax Chronicle (Raidou) Nocturne:

0054CE24 00000001



These codes haven’t been tested for use on devices like Action Replay, etc, but given that the PAL code was originally made by whoever (if you’re that someone, give me a shoutout and I’ll credit you!) for use with an Action Replay MAX, it should be okay with other devices for other regions. Just use a program like Omniconvert to convert the digits to whatever format your device accepts and you should be good to go.

Memory Editor Codes (Cheat Engine, etc.)

Original, pre-Maniax Nocturne:

2052DCA4 00000001 US Nocturne:

2054E824 00000001

PAL Nocturne:

20428BA8 00000001

Maniax Chronicle (Raidou) Nocturne:

2054CE24 00000001

So long as you’re using a relatively recent memory editor, these codes should be consistent no matter what you use because of how PCSX2 allocates RAM nowadays. After you turn the game on within PCSX2 and point your memory editor towards that executable, go to whatever button or window you use to manually designate a memory address and put in that left set of digits before the space as the address and then set the value as the right half after the space. The digits for the value are displayed in hex here, but technically since it’s only a 0 or 1 sort of proposition, you shouldn’t have to set that for the code to work.

PNACH Files (For loading within PCSX2 using its internal cheat code system)

.pnach files are the files contained inside PCSX2′s cheat directory that the emulator consults to activate cheats. Making one is simple, even if you don’t understand the actual parlance of what’s contained within them. Just open up a text editor, copy and paste the text for whichever version of the game you want to play using this cheat, and save it to PCSX2′s cheats directory (which should be inside the main folder where you’d normally execute the emulator) using the designated filename I’ve provided (make sure it saves as a .pnach and not as a .txt!). Then, once you’ve opened the emulator, go to the “System” menu option and make sure “Enable Cheats” is checked. After that, you should be set; the emulator will automatically load your cheats into the system once you’ve got the game running. Of course, if you already have .pnach files for Nocturne in the directory, you can just add this code below whatever else you’ve got and you should be good to go.

Original, pre-Maniax Nocturne:

Filename: D60DA6D4.pnach

Contents: gametitle=Shin Megami Tensei 3 - Nocturne (NTSC-J) [SLPM-65242] Battle Debug (L1 for graphics debugging, R1 for other options)

patch=1,EE,0052DCA4,extended,00000001

US Nocturne:

Filename: E8FCF8EC.pnach

Contents: gametitle=Shin Megami Tensei 3 - Nocturne (US) Battle Debug (L1 for graphics debugging, R1 for other options)

patch=1,EE,0054E824,extended,00000001 PAL Nocturne:

Filename: AE0DE7B7.pnach

Contents: gametitle=Shin Megami Tensei 3 - Lucifer’s Call (PAL) Battle Debug (L1 for graphics debugging, R1 for other options)

patch=1,EE,00428BA8,extended,00000001 Maniax Chronicle (Raidou) Nocturne:

Filename: 47BA9034.pnach

Contents: gametitle=Shin Megami Tensei 3 - Nocturne Maniax Chronicle (JPN) Battle Debug (L1 for graphics debugging, R1 for other options)

patch=1,EE,0054CE24,extended,00000001

What You Can Do with the Battle Debug Menu

While not necessarily as diverse feature-wise compared to its more famous cousin the title screen/disc swap debug menu, this battle screen debug menu is plenty fun in its own right! Controlling it is pretty simple: at any time during battle, you can press L1 to bring up some minor graphical stuff. But if you press R1 during your turn, that’s where the real good stuff lies. This will bring up a cursor that defaults to the protagonist and can be moved around using the d-pad to the other combatants, with everyone’s stats and whatnot being displayed on the left side of the screen. But if you then press X/O (whichever button is confirm in that game) with the reticle over whichever target you please, you’re then given a window with which to manipulate them to a pretty extensive degree. As the US version’s menu options are displayed in Korean for whatever reason despite everything else in the options themselves being in English/romaji, I’ll reprint the PAL version’s English options below in order for posterity, though they’re generally pretty intuitive anyway:

Alter char



Alter HP



Alter MP



Alter ailment



Motion test



These functions should all be pretty apparent. “Alter char” lets you swap out fighters, including the protagonist, with pretty much any other demon or character you fight in the game and even some you can’t, like the train attendant you meet at the start of the game. “Alter HP” and “Alter MP” let you change a character’s HP and MP respectively and “Alter ailment” lets you give or remove status ailments to them. And finally, “Motion test” lets you cycle through each character’s battle animations.

Finally, if you press L2 and R2 with this code enabled, you can instant kill all enemies and get on with your life. Great if you’re not up for grinding I guess!

That should be the long and short of it. I tried googling to see whether this stuff was really known already, but outside the PAL cheat code repositories, I couldn’t find a thing, so it was fun to spend a day figuring this stuff out! Obviously feel free to share these wherever, but a credit back to this blog post would be appreciated when sourcing this information elsewhere. Other than that, hope you all enjoy it!

-Pepsiman

PS: As some of you might have noticed, I haven’t tested this stuff in Japanese Maniax. I presume you can trigger it just fine in that game and could figure out the code easily enough if there’s demand, but haven’t bothered for now since my understanding is that there’s not much that’s special about it, what with it being the same as the localized games content-wise. Still, if you’d like to see codes for that, let me know and I’ll try to whip them up! (The hackers among you can likely figure it out yourselves with just a memory editor and some eyeballing how I came up with all this out after finding the original PAL code, though.)