Alundra Cheat Codes & Secrets
Complete collection of cheat codes, passwords, unlockables, and hidden secrets for Alundra (1997).
Cheat Codes and Button Sequences
Alundra, the 1997 action-RPG developed by Matrix Software (formerly Climax Entertainment) and published by Working Designs in North America, does not feature a traditional button-code cheat system at the title or pause screen — a deliberate design choice given the game’s emphasis on puzzle-solving integrity. However, the game is extraordinarily rich in hidden content, exploitable mechanics, collectible secrets, and version-specific quirks that functioned as the community’s equivalent of cheat codes throughout the late 1990s and into the emulation era. Everything documented here applies to the PlayStation version unless noted otherwise.
Gilded Falcon Collectible Rewards
The 50 Gilded Falcons scattered throughout Inoa and its surrounding dungeons are Alundra’s primary hidden reward system. Trading them to Naomi in Inoa Village unlocks escalating prizes that dramatically alter the power curve of a playthrough. Many players treated the Falcon hunt as the game’s built-in “cheat layer” — front-loading Falcon collection to gain power-ups that trivialize otherwise brutal boss fights.
| Falcons Traded | Reward | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 500 Gilder | Early-game gold boost |
| 10 | Strength Tonic | Permanently raises attack power |
| 20 | Life Vessel | Extends maximum HP bar |
| 30 | Magic Vessel | Extends maximum MP bar |
| 40 | Royal Crest | Reduces MP cost of all magic by half |
| 50 | Mau | Strongest one-handed weapon in the game |
The Royal Crest at 40 Falcons is arguably the closest thing to a cheat the game offers — halving MP costs effectively doubles your usable magic reserves for every boss encounter and dungeon run from that point forward. Players who prioritize Falcon collection before progressing the main story gain an enormous advantage. The Mau sword at 50 Falcons is the highest-damage melee weapon available, outclassing everything else you find through normal progression.
Key Falcon locations that are commonly missed: One Falcon is located behind a bombable wall in the Coal Mine dungeon that has no environmental hint. Another sits inside a chest in Torla Mountain that requires using the Wind Book to reach a platform most players assume is decorative. A third is hidden in a barrel inside a specific villager’s home in Inoa that resets its contents on a day cycle — it must be checked during specific in-game time windows.
Life Vessels and Magic Vessels
Beyond the Falcon reward system, seven additional Life Vessels and seven Magic Vessels are hidden throughout the world, each permanently increasing your health or magic capacity. These are the functional equivalent of heart containers in contemporaneous Zelda titles, and finding them all is the primary method of creating a survivable character for the game’s notoriously brutal late dungeons.
| Vessel Type | Approximate Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Life Vessel | Lurvy’s Farm cellar | Requires Bombs |
| Life Vessel | Nirude’s Lair, second floor | Hidden behind illusory floor |
| Life Vessel | Lake Shrine, eastern wing | Requires Longbow |
| Life Vessel | Desert of Despair | Buried chest, requires full sand traversal |
| Magic Vessel | Coal Mine, lower level | Bombable false wall |
| Magic Vessel | Magyscar, north passage | Requires Fire Book |
| Magic Vessel | Torla Mountain summit | Wind Book required |
Collecting all vessels before entering the Sanctuary of Fate — the game’s penultimate dungeon sequence — is strongly recommended and functions as a power-gate that makes the difference between a reasonable challenge and near-impossible difficulty.
Secret and Hidden Equipment
Alundra contains several pieces of equipment that have no in-game prompts indicating their existence. These are the closest equivalent to hidden unlockables the game offers.
| Item | How to Obtain | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Warp Wing | Purchase from traveling merchant Meade after he appears post-Coal Mine | Teleport to Inoa from any overworld location |
| Legend Sword | Complete the complete Falcon set (all 50) + beat the final dungeon | Unlocked in NG+ carry-over |
| Charm of Life | Hidden chest in Inoa’s eastern cliff face | Reduces death damage penalty |
| Power Glove upgrade | Destroy all pots in the Coal Mine in a single visit | Hidden loot trigger |
The Warp Wing is particularly valuable and easy to miss — Meade’s schedule in the game is opaque, and many players complete the entire game without ever seeing his merchant inventory. He appears near the southern Inoa bridge only during a narrow window after the Coal Mine events and before the Murgg Woods sequence.
Beneficial Glitches and Exploits
The PlayStation version of Alundra contains several exploitable behaviors that the speedrunning and preservation community have documented extensively since the late 1990s.
Shop Inventory Manipulation: In Inoa’s general store, purchasing an item when your inventory is exactly full causes the item to briefly enter a “ghost” state. Dropping a consumable immediately before confirming purchase allows you to duplicate the item if the confirmation dialogue fires before the inventory check resolves. This works most reliably with Herbs (basic healing items) and allows for essentially unlimited healing supplies in the early game. The timing window is approximately 2–3 frames on original hardware.
Damage Boost Clipping: In several dungeon rooms, taking knockback damage from an enemy while standing at a specific tile adjacent to a locked door or wall causes Alundra to be pushed through the collision boundary. This is most reliably reproducible in the Magyscar dungeon using the Fire Wyvern enemies in the southern corridors. Community documentation from the GameFAQs boards (circa 1999–2001) maps out approximately eight rooms where this is consistent enough to use intentionally.
Dream Sequence Skip (Coal Mine Dream): The second Coal Mine dream sequence can be exited early without triggering the correct puzzle solution by rapidly cycling through the book menu while standing on the exit tile. The game’s event flag for “dream completed” fires on the menu close animation rather than the actual puzzle resolution in this one instance, allowing the sequence to end prematurely. This skips roughly 8–12 minutes of a notoriously frustrating section.
Sand Drift Exploit (Desert of Despair): In the Desert of Despair overworld section, the sand current that pushes Alundra westward can be partially neutralized by entering and exiting the item menu every few steps. The movement interrupt resets the current’s momentum accumulation without resetting Alundra’s position, allowing traversal of areas that are designed to be inaccessible without the Winged Boots. This allows collection of the Desert Life Vessel significantly earlier than intended.
Version Differences: Japanese vs. North American vs. PAL
| Feature | Japanese (Sony Music, 1997) | North American (Working Designs, 1998) | PAL (Psygnosis, 1998) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script tone | Darker, more formal | Humorous Working Designs localization with pop-culture references | Closer to Japanese but with EU spelling |
| Difficulty | Base difficulty | Identical mechanics, same difficulty | Identical to NA |
| Save system | Memory Card only | Memory Card only | Memory Card only |
| Loading times | Standard | Identical | Slightly longer on some systems |
| Debug content | Internal debug room accessible via RAM manipulation | Same internal structure, same debug room address | Same |
The Working Designs localization introduced several added lines of NPC dialogue — particularly in Inoa’s background characters — that reference gaming culture and Breaking The Fourth Wall moments. These were absent from the Japanese original and are considered Easter eggs specific to the NA release. One villager’s dialogue was altered to reference the difficulty of other Working Designs titles, a recurring in-joke across their catalog.
Developer Easter Eggs and Hidden Messages
The Bonaire Memorial: In Inoa Village, one of the gravestones in the cemetery area contains an inscription that matches the name structure of a Matrix Software developer. This was confirmed through Japanese gaming press coverage around the game’s original launch and has been cited in multiple retrospective analyses as an intentional memorial inclusion.
The Library Hidden Text: The in-game library in Inoa contains bookshelves that Alundra can examine. One particular shelf, only examinable after the events of the Kline dream dungeon, produces a developer message in the NA version that reads as an acknowledgment from the localization team. It appears in no other version and references the localization process directly — a Working Designs signature move they employed across multiple titles including Lunar and Vanguard Bandits.
Myra’s Dialogue Cycle: NPC Myra in Inoa has a hidden extended dialogue tree that only unlocks after speaking to every other named NPC in the village at least twice. Most players never trigger it because there’s no prompt indicating it exists. The extended conversation reveals background lore about Inoa’s founding that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the game’s text.
Internal Debug Room: Via RAM address manipulation in emulators (not accessible on unmodified hardware without a cheat device), Alundra contains an internal room at map index 0x00 that appears to be a developer testing space. It contains a flat room with representatives of most enemy types and interactive objects, consistent with testing environments found in other Matrix Software titles from the same era.
New Game Plus and Carry-Over Mechanics
After completing the game, Alundra does not offer a traditional New Game Plus mode with explicit menu selection. However, saving on the completion screen and loading that file begins the game again with Alundra’s equipment inventory retained — weapons, books, and some consumables persist. Max HP and MP bars reset to base values, but all vessels must be recollected. This carry-over state is sometimes referred to by the community as “NG+” though it was likely an unintended save state behavior rather than a designed feature.
Playing through the opening sections with full late-game equipment (particularly the Mau sword and Royal Crest) trivializes all early combat encounters and allows players to access certain puzzle skips that require equipment they shouldn’t have at that point in the story. This is the closest Alundra comes to a true “easy mode” option.
ProAction Replay and GameShark Codes
For players using cheat devices on original PlayStation hardware, the following codes were documented in gaming magazines and GameShark codebooks of the era.
| Code | Effect | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| 800B23D4 0063 | Max HP (99) | PlayStation (NA) |
| 800B23D6 0063 | Max MP (99) | PlayStation (NA) |
| 800C4F20 FFFF | Maximum Gilder (65535) | PlayStation (NA) |
| 800B2400 0032 | All 50 Gilded Falcons registered | PlayStation (NA) |
| 800B23E0 0009 | Maximum attack stat | PlayStation (NA) |
| 300C4F24 0063 | Herbs maxed (99 count) | PlayStation (NA) |
These codes were reverse-engineered from the game’s memory map and published in GameShark Pro codebooks released in 1998–1999. The Gilder max code in particular was widely circulated as it eliminated any resource pressure from the game’s otherwise steep equipment prices. The Falcon registration code activates all 50 Falcons in Naomi’s tracking system, allowing immediate access to the Mau sword and all intermediate rewards without physical collection.
Japanese version memory addresses differ by offset; the NA codes above will not function correctly on the Japanese disc without adjustment to the base address.