Jul -- The Cutting Room Floor: unused stuff in robocco wars (famicom)

sharc
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Posted on 05-26-12 10:37:29 PM

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robocco wars seemed like an obvious candidate for unused material because i knew it had gone through some development changes. early on it was called aruden raruden, with a little train as the main character and taito as the publisher. at some point this changed and IGS picked it up instead, changing the title and turning the main character instead into a gundam-like battle robot.

what i was really hoping for was some sign of the original title screen or player sprite, which unfortunately there seems to be no sign of. what is there is just about everything else; unused enemies, background art, powerups, items, an artist note and two completely playable unfinished levels. the works! doesn't seem like much of it has been documented so let's take a look.

here's the block the game uses for player sprite and projectiles, powerups, hud elements, etc. this is the land form; there are different blocks with the sub for water stages and jet for air stages.

this treasure chest is definitely not used anywhere in the game, despite appearing in the player sprite data for every land stage.

on the left is the game's standard power-up bubble, but this one contains a symbol i've never seen. in the same block is what looks like a matching projectile. like the treasure chest these are only used in land stages.

background materials for stage one, sweet castle.

these bits appear to be part of a sign; i don't know where that "ring" is supposed to go for, but clearly the rest is meant to be WELCOME to WOODCITY. early name for the stage, maybe.

background materials for part two of stage 2.

this Welcome! doesn't appear anywhere.

stage 4's background.

this guy doesn't appear anywhere. there is a very similar immobile block enemy that serves as an obstacle, but the borders on its top and bottom are so thick that you can only see its eyes. for some reason the used version is loaded in space in the submarine version of the player sprite block.

this also seems totally unused; skywriting? a cursive "lnor"? huh?

backgroundssss for stage fiveeeee

looks like the game's standard moving platforms, but i've never seen one with a ! marking like that.

and i've definitely never seen this little animated walking block.

stage six! backgrounds!

crammed pretty full since there's a whole lot going on in this stage, like a gigantic planet and a castle that appear once in the whole stage. but this stop sign is not seen anywhere, although it might be related to the city that appears in the background at one point?

stage seven backgrounds, part the first

hidden in the corner is a little note in japanese. seems like a particularly scrawly "sayo-chan <3" aww how about that

stage seven backgrounds part two: the reckoning

broken up and scattered among the sky tiles is this GOOD LUCK! sure are a lot of these little sign things.

backgrounds for unused level, ninja mansion

unpopulated with popcorn enemies but its unique minibosses are there and the stage is playable. there's a video of it on youtube. loads music from stage five and boss from stage three.

backgrounds for part one and two of unused level, blue trap

same deal as above: no fodder, unique functional minibosses, video on youtube, cues up music and boss for stage six.

gonna do the minibosses later since i'm tired of mucking around resizing and uploading this stuff

rabidabid
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Posted on 05-27-12 12:52:05 AM

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Nice finds. I remember seeing in the readme for the fan translation on romhacking.net, the guy mentioned the Sayo-chan tile and names for two possibly unused stages. It's good to see those have finally been unearthed.

sharc
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Posted on 05-27-12 02:33:32 AM

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oh. well, so he did! i figured i couldn't be the first person to notice this stuff, but i couldn't find any of it listed out. i've also played way more of this game in the past week than a sane person ought to, so the stuff not actually used in the game really sticks out. and speaking of which, on to the enemies.

in the same block as the first boss is this ninja train, miniboss of the unused ninja mansion stage. the swirly sprite is for its rarely used charge attack, and the squinty eyes frame don't seem to be used at all. somewhat interesting in that its profile is very close to the original hero's sprite.

elsewhere, there's a bunch of oddball things together that aren't seen in the game. first is this nutty looking bullzoder machine. i can't even figure out what this is; at first the ball seemed like a projectile but it looks like it's actually attached. and what's with that weird vacuum mouth thing?

followed by...uh. an angry head with a hard hat and a cannon for a nose riding in a tea saucer?

and lastly, this goofy bucktoothed thing. if i can find the palette i think i have a new avatar.

here's the vaguely gradius-looking miniboss that shows up in the blue trap stage.

and here.s the submarine miniboss from the same stage, along with one of its projectiles.

now here's maybe the weirdest part. this block is the final boss and the miniboss from its stage, which appears four times with different colors and attack patterns/projectiles each round.

also here, completely unused, are three other enemies the same size as the miniboss. looks like there were supposed to be four different minibosses here? if their art is finished, why didn't they get used? really weird. maybe igs really rushed things along once it took over?

lastly, the level icons all together.

the ninja mansion and blue trap level icons are in here. what's weird is that they're left intact when the icon for starlight smile is broken up into the little star tiles seen mixed in with the text characters. why on earth didn't they delete one of the totally unused level icons and use that space for starlight smile? weird weird weird.

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