rex nebular cheats
As you may already have discovered, Rex's story has several
possible endings, only one of which is a "happy"
one. You can watch each of these endings simply by typing
the proper command from the DOS prompt:
mainmenu -w:1 ("A Quick Death")
mainmenu -w:2 ("An Honorable Death")
mainmenu -w:3 ("Victory!")
mainmenu -w:4 ("The Decompression Ending")
The last of these (mainmenu -w:4) shows the epilogue
only, since the decompression itself is handled with special
program code instead of an animation script.
Be sure to play through the game normally first, so that
you won't spoil the ending for yourself. Then, use the
command line options to bring up "instant replays"
for your friends.
Cheat Mode!
Rex Nebular does in fact contain a special "cheat
mode" that was used during development. Now you too
can make use of this special, privileged set of keyboard
commands. One word of warning, however, before you begin:
these cheat keys were designed to be used by experienced
programmers (nyuk, nyuk). Mostly, that means that if they
are not used with great care, the cheat keys can cause
the game to crash or cause Rex to get permanently stuck
somewhere. We'll tell you how to get into cheat mode and
give you a few basic pointers on how to use it, but the
rest is entirely AT YOUR OWN RISK! Remember also that
once you turn cheat mode on in a game, it will remain
on even when you save that game (so any damage that might
have been done by cheat mode will remain in effect for
that game when you restore it). To turn cheat mode off,
you must either start a new game or restore an old game
from before you started cheating.
Finally, we STRONGLY suggest that you play Rex all the
way through before turning on cheat mode. First and foremost,
this prevents cheat mode from spoiling the game for you.
Secondly, it gives you a better idea of the intended story
line of Rex (so that when you completely foul it up with
cheat mode you will realize what is happening). We must
emphasize that cheat mode is really nothing more than
a way to go bashing around the planet in the wrong order
and at the wrong times.
How To Activate Cheat Mode
To activate cheat mode, you must first either start a
new game or restore an old game. Next, press the CTRL
key and hold it down. While continuing to hold down the
CTRL key, type the letters W, I, D, E, P, I, P, E in sequence.
When you are finished, a grey box containing the message
"Cheating Enabled" should appear (if it does
not, try again from the beginning--you must have missed
a key). Once the grey box appears, you can release the
CTRL key. Then, press the SPACE bar to clear the message
from the screen. You are now in cheat mode!
Cheat Mode Options
Once you have entered cheat mode, you can teleport yourself
to any location in the game. To do this, press the CTRL-T
key. A grey box will pop up and ask you where you want
to go. Just type in the proper room number and "poof"--you're
there. The tricky part, of course, is finding out the
proper room number. If you type in an invalid room number,
the game will abort with the error. Here is a list of
valid room numbers that you can try:
Section 1: (Underwater)
Slippery Pig: 101, 102, 103
Underwater: 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109
Cave: 110, 111
Section 2: (Island)
Island South: 212
Island East: 208, 209, 203
Island West: 207, 211, 210, 205
Island North: 202, 201
Witch Doctor: 214
Twinkles: 215
Section 3: (Underground City -- Medical Complex)
Capture Scene: 301
Death Scene: 304
Air vent: 313
Interrogation Room: 318
Player's Cell (before havoc): 307
Player's Cell (after havoc): 357
Guard station (before/after): 311/361
Gender Bender: 316
Intersection (after): 354
Vault room (after): 352
Teleporter room (after): 351
Section 4: (Underground City -- South Annex)
Scanner Corridors: 401, 407
Other Corridors: 405, 406
Wanda's Bar: 402
Armory: 408
Storage: 410
Laboratory: 411
Teleporter: 413
Section 5: (Machopolis Lower)
Arrive: 501, 551
Security: 503
Software Store/Lab: 506, 507, 508
Restaurant: 511, 512
Elevator: 513
Section 6: (Machopolis Upper)
Bruce's Place: 601, 602, 603
Sea Window: 604
Abdul's Auto: 607, 608
Buckluster Video: 609, 610
Hermit: 611
Williams Bypass: 612
Section 7: (Machopolis Rim/Governor's)
City Rim "before": 751, 752
City Rim "after": 701, 702
Sea Monster: 703
Bottle: 704
Outside Penthouse: 705
Governor's Penthouse: 706
Section 8: (Space Port)
Control Station: 801
Landing Pad One: 802
Landing Pad Two: 803
Inside Ship: 804
You can find out what "room" you are in at
any time by pressing CTRL-P. The grey box which appears
will tell you the current room number (among other things).
The CTRL-O key allows you to move objects around. When
you press CTRL-O, you will be asked for an object number
(valid numbers range from 0 to 54, with the exceptions
of 18, 38, and 44). You can then move the object to any
desired location ("2" moves it to your own inventory;
"0" gets rid of it). Moving objects is extremely
risky, since typing an invalid object number is almost
guaranteed to crash the game. We'll let you figure out
which objects are which by trial and error. We will, however,
give you one example: Press CTRL-O. Then type the number
"39" (for detonators) and press ENTER. Then
type the number "2" (for player inventory) and
press ENTER. You now have the detonators!
We recommend that you DO NOT attempt to use the CTRL-G
option (to change global flags). Bad, horrible things
could happen.
While Rex is walking somewhere, you can press the SPACE
bar to scoot him along his path quickly. The risk here
is that occasionally you will get Rex "stuck"
so that he can't move at all; if this happens, press CTRL-Z.
Pressing the SPACE bar occasionally has other bizarre
effects (such as causing all the people on the screen
to disappear). These exciting bonus features can also
generally be corrected by pressing CTRL-Z (see, isn't
cheat mode neat!).
Several other strange and wonderful cheat options exist;
they have not been described here, but you may find them
with a little experimentation. Use them at your own risk!!!
One of these features is the "frame by frame"
mode which will be activated if you accidentally press
the CTRL-F key. The game will appear to "freeze up",
but you can restart it by pressing CTRL-F again.
