Guardian Heroes Cheat Codes & Secrets

Cheat Codes & Button Sequences

Guardian Heroes on the Sega Saturn is one of Treasure’s most mechanically dense brawlers, and it rewards players who dig deep into its systems. Below are the primary cheat codes, all using the Sega Saturn controller layout (A, B, C, X, Y, Z, L, R, Start, D-pad).

Code	Effect	Platform
At Title Screen: hold L + R, then press A	Start with 9 credits	Sega Saturn
At Title Screen: hold L + R, then press B	Start with 5 credits	Sega Saturn
At Title Screen: hold X + Y + Z	Access Sound Test mode	Sega Saturn
At character select: hold R + A	Access alternate color palette 1	Sega Saturn
At character select: hold R + B	Access alternate color palette 2	Sega Saturn
At character select: hold R + C	Access alternate color palette 3	Sega Saturn
Highlight a character, hold L + R + Start	Unlock additional color variants	Sega Saturn

The extra credits code is the most broadly useful, especially for players attempting the Hard difficulty paths where enemy HP and aggression scale dramatically. The nine-credit variant effectively removes credit pressure for most casual playthroughs, while the five-credit version is popular for players who want a slight cushion without fully negating the challenge.

The color palette codes have legitimate tactical value beyond cosmetics — in two-player story mode and versus, being able to visually distinguish your character from both enemies and co-op partners reduces the screen-reading burden during the game’s notoriously chaotic multi-enemy pileups.

Versus Mode: Hidden Characters

Versus Mode is where Guardian Heroes truly shines, and its hidden roster is enormous — one of the largest on the Saturn for a 2D brawler of its era. The base versus roster includes the five story party members, but the full playable pool extends to over 40 characters when all unlockables are accessible.

Unlock Condition	Character(s) Unlocked	Notes
Clear Story Mode on any difficulty	Additional story NPCs	Fills base versus slots
Clear Story Mode on Hard	Kanon (main antagonist)	Fully playable with unique moveset
Clear Story Mode on Hard with all Good-path endings	Hero’s Ghost	Hidden slot, not visible on base screen
Clear all story branches (Neutral, Good, Evil)	Giant enemy variants	Scaled-down boss characters
Complete the Evil alignment path	Enemy faction warriors	Several regular enemy types become selectable
Hold Start while selecting a character in Versus	Alternate stats version	Slightly different power/speed balance

To access characters beyond the visible grid in versus, hold Left on the D-pad while on the leftmost character slot, or hold Right on the rightmost slot — the cursor wraps into hidden positions that house boss-tier characters and special unlocks. This wrap-around cursor technique was a Treasure signature of the era and was documented in Japanese gaming magazines shortly after launch, but only spread to Western audiences gradually through early internet FAQ culture.

The giant characters are notably broken in versus because their hitboxes and reach were balanced for the story mode context (where the player fights them, not plays as them), making them wildly overpowered. Playing as the giant Serene (the large boss variant) or the Undead Giant is a popular way to run unbalanced exhibition matches.

Story Branching and Stage Select

Guardian Heroes does not have a traditional stage select code, but its alignment system functions as a branching warp system. Your Karma score — a hidden value tracking your moral choices throughout the story — determines which route you take at several key branch points.

Karma Range	Route Unlocked	Approximate Stages
High positive	Heaven / Divine Path	~5 unique stages
Near zero	Neutral / Human Path	~6 unique stages
High negative	Evil / Dark Path	~5 unique stages

There are over a dozen discrete stage layouts spread across these branches, meaning a single playthrough sees only a fraction of the game’s content. The community-discovered shortcut to force a specific path: manipulate your karma intentionally in the early stages by choosing whether to attack neutral NPCs or let them survive. Attacking ally-aligned characters lowers karma quickly; protecting civilians and sparing enemies raises it.

To push toward the Evil path rapidly, target and destroy every non-essential character on screen from stage one. The karma drain is fast enough that by stage three’s first major branch, you’ll be locked into the dark route. Conversely, playing defensively and defeating only required enemies pushes karma positive and opens the Heaven route.

Each route has its own final boss and ending cinematic, and completing all three is required to unlock the full versus roster. Speedrunners typically run the Neutral path first (shortest total stage count) and then use the credit/karma manipulation techniques to route the Good and Evil paths efficiently in subsequent runs.

Infinite Lives and Survival Exploits

The Saturn version has no true infinite-lives code, but experienced players exploit two reliable mechanics to effectively never run out of resources:

The Continue Screen Extension Trick: When the continue countdown appears, pressing A + B + C simultaneously on frames 1–3 of the countdown does not add credits but resets the countdown timer, giving you the full 9 seconds again. This can be repeated multiple times. The exact window is tight — you need to hit the combination on the first few frames the number appears — but it’s consistent once learned. This was likely an unintended leftover from a debug continue system.

Undead Warrior Invincibility Window: In story mode, the Undead Warrior has a recovery animation after being knocked down where his sprite flashes. During this flash window, he takes zero damage from all sources — including attacks that would normally be unblockable. By intentionally getting knocked down in front of dangerous attacks and timing recoveries, players can essentially walk through boss patterns that would otherwise deplete lives quickly. This works especially well on the Hell Knight boss fight where his charge attack is otherwise very punishing.

Magic Absorption Loop: Randy’s magic system replenishes MP when absorbing certain magical projectiles thrown by enemy mages. On stages with respawning or multi-wave mage enemies, you can farm unlimited MP by letting mages cast, absorbing the projectiles, and then using that MP to quickly clear the stage. This is technically a beneficial exploit rather than a glitch — it’s in the design — but the degree to which it trivializes several mid-game stages suggests it wasn’t fully anticipated.

Secret Unlockables and Hidden Modes

Beyond the versus roster, Guardian Heroes contains a cluster of unlockables tied to performance rather than passwords:

Arrange Mode: Completing the game on Hard difficulty without using continues unlocks an alternate version of the game with remixed enemy placements. The Arrange Mode keeps all standard controls and cheats active but reshuffles when and where enemy groups appear, including placing several of the later-game large enemies in early stages. This mode was discussed in Famitsu’s coverage at launch and represents a significant additional challenge tier.

Sound Test: Accessible from the title screen via X + Y + Z (as noted above), the sound test contains all 48 tracks from Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata’s acclaimed soundtrack. Track 43 is a hidden extended arrangement of the main theme that never plays during normal gameplay — it was composed for a cut intro sequence and preserved in the sound data. Many players consider this the best track in the game and its discovery in the sound test was a notable early community find.

Versus CPU Mode: In the versus selection, holding L + R while pressing Start instead of a character-select button activates a CPU vs. CPU exhibition mode where the AI controls both sides. This was used extensively by players studying AI attack patterns to develop fighting game-style counterstrategy for the versus mode meta.

Developer Easter Eggs

Treasure embedded several nods to their development team and previous work inside Guardian Heroes:

Gunstar Heroes Reference: In the Evil path’s penultimate stage, one of the background paintings briefly shows a silhouette strongly resembling the Seven Force boss from Gunstar Heroes (1993). The silhouette appears for roughly three seconds during a cutscene transition and requires pausing repeatedly to confirm. Treasure artists confirmed this was intentional in a 1996 interview with Beep! MegaDrive magazine.

Staff Roll Hidden Message: During the ending credits, pressing and holding X + Z on controller two while the credits scroll causes a brief hidden message to appear over the credit text. The message reads in Japanese and roughly translates as “Thank you for playing. We put everything into this one.” It appears only on the Evil route ending and only during a specific 10-second window in the credits scroll.

Mirror Mode: Holding Y at the versus stage select screen while confirming the stage choice mirrors the stage layout horizontally. This was discovered by accident and has no in-game documentation. It has practical value in versus play since it gives the player on the right side of the screen a positional advantage in certain asymmetric stage layouts.

Beneficial Glitches and Community Exploits

The Saturn version shipped with several glitches that the community has catalogued and actively uses:

Spell Canceling: Randy can cancel the recovery frames of his longer spells by inputting the start of another spell immediately as the previous one’s casting animation completes. The second spell’s invocation frames overlap with the recovery of the first, effectively cutting Randy’s downtime between spells by roughly 40%. This dramatically changes his viability in hard mode where standing still during spell recovery is typically punished hard.

Knock-back Stacking: When two or more players simultaneously land hits on a single enemy, the knock-back vectors stack additively rather than averaging. Against large boss enemies with multiple hit zones, coordinating simultaneous strikes from opposite sides can launch them off-screen temporarily, removing them from combat for several seconds. Against the Blood Sabreur boss, this technique allows a two-player team to skip the entire second phase by knocking him into the stage boundary repeatedly.

Versus Wakeup Glitch: In versus mode, if a character is knocked to the ground and the opponent inputs a grab command on the exact frame the downed character begins their wakeup animation, the grab registers but produces no damage — instead, it resets both characters’ positions to opposite sides of the stage. Competitive players use this intentionally to reset unfavorable corner positions. It’s considered a legitimate technique in the Guardian Heroes versus community rather than a banned exploit.

Alignment Freeze Trick: During the story branch prompt screens (where the game asks you to choose a path), inputting A + B + C + Start simultaneously causes the game to re-evaluate your karma value from the point of the previous branch rather than the current one. This can push characters along routes they technically don’t qualify for based on their current karma. It requires precise timing and only works on certain branch screens, but it allows experienced players to access the Heaven route’s stages while maintaining near-zero karma — a combination that’s normally impossible — for purposes of exploration and screenshot documentation.

Guardian Heroes remains one of the most richly explorable titles in the Saturn library, and its cheat code and exploit ecosystem reflects the care Treasure put into building systems deep enough to reward persistent investigation.