That’s super cool! I loved the original Ecco on the genesis. Beat it several times. I miss when games had real cheats/debug modes. It’s part of the reason I hot in to programming and development in the first place. I feel like kids these days don’t get this experience anymore.
This sort of thing seems to have really fallen off after the Grand Theft Auto "Hot Coffee" scandal. Having hidden stuff in a game went from being a fun thing to a potential liability.