Author Topic: Secret maps  (Read 16487 times)

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Offline Raccoon Sam

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Secret maps
« on: May 07, 2022, 08:19:17 am »
Recently I programmed a level viewer for Pocky & Rocky (SNES) and was delighted to find that the final level, Stage 6: Battle With Black Mantle has an unused area not seen in this (presumably) screenshot-stitched map by MagnetiC.

this is my output:


the only rooms you can actually see in-game are these highlighted here:



So here's the unused corridor:


and its background:


and my best-guess estimates of the three middle rooms


Very interesting! There are unused enemy graphics in the bank assigned to that level, but we weren't able to spawn them anywhere sadly. I was doing analysis with Random Talking Bush and they found this interesting bit too:
Quote from: RandomTBush
There's traces of an unused stage in the first Pocky & Rocky as well by the looks of it.
Setting the selected byte to "6" on the level select and moving the selection up or down makes "Stage 7" appear.

Can't be selected regardless, and forcing the stage value to be anything higher makes it default to Stage 6.
...but if you change it during the map transition...

Which is definitely different than the actual Stage 6's.

Apparently the Black Mantle's Revenge is making the game crash. 😛
Haven't gotten to parsing the level data for either game so I don't know if any actual unused stages exist yet


This is all pioneer work, by the way, so you won't find this info on the Cutting Room Floor wiki  8)
Nonetheless, how do you feel about "secret maps" in general? Super Mario Bros. 3 might be the most known about, or at least I think a lot of people know about the unused levels in the game... Do you know of any cool unused maps? What's your favorite?

Offline VGCartography

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Re: Secret maps
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2022, 09:31:05 am »
This isn't quite the same, but the original Demon's Souls on PS3 is known for having a substantial area (would've been the 6th major area after the included 5) that has been datamined, with partial collision and some incomplete enemy models/animations resulting in a partially completed resurrection of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjkdKKgmofA
(there are of course multiple YTers who have made their careers based on Souls cut content)

There was a partially finished dungeon called Singing Mountain on Chrono Trigger that Square confirmed was cut from prehistoric age, but the music for it and some layouts/graphics can be found in the ROM.

Tomba's Village of Civilization is just one piece of a large amount of unused Tomba stuff that is actively being researched:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq5rTECKb_w  ;)

Sonic 2 also has a couple zones found on the ROM that weren't used iirc, not sure how far along. Those are a handful I can recall.

Offline Raccoon Sam

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Re: Secret maps
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2022, 01:51:30 pm »
I never knew about those! Interesting stuff  8)
Tomba's Village of Civilization is just one piece of a large amount of unused Tomba stuff that is actively being researched:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq5rTECKb_w  ;)
Now that you mention it - yeah, that and the Masakari Jungle area!