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Amusing test file with characters from an old MMO


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I was just gonna throw this into the data-mine topic, but I figured some more people might get some laughs.

On occasions, developers borrow assets from elsewhere when prototyping ideas. If the assets never appear in the final game, there's no harm done and it saves time creating assets that may not be used in the final product.

But every now and then, the developers end up leaving test files in the game and I *think* this is the first time the Fire Emblem team has left test files using foreign assets.

(The other time was leaving a Pokemon music track in the leaked debug files for the GBA games, but we never did determine if they were there from the beginning or added by someone else.)

Test-Kyoten.png

In this case, we have a prototype base meant to appear during the village exploration scenes.

Except the characters here are apparently from an old MMORPG called CroXino. See here and here.

Hidari, the game's artist, contributed artwork to this MMO, so I'm assuming the artwork is his and that's why they were used for the test.

Anyway, here I was about to get excited about possible cut characters in Echoes or something ^^;;;

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Wait, those two characters are from a non-Fire Emblem title that really appeared in the game data? That's kinda extremely random that they appeared in the game data for Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.

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5 minutes ago, King Marth 64 said:

Wait, those two characters are from a non-Fire Emblem title that really appeared in the game data? That's kinda extremely random that they appeared in the game data for Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.

Yar, I was surprised to see them.

My 2nd paragraph has an explanation. I don't work in game development, but I imagine it's not uncommon practice. Sometimes the developers need to test a lot of ideas and they need to do it fast or they waste valuable development time.

So rather than ask Hidari to draw some characters really quick to test the village system, they probably asked him if they could borrow some old artwork.

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That's pretty cool, actually.  It's always interesting to learn more about what goes on during game development, even if it's in a roundabout fashion.

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I thought I remember hearing something similar with Metroid Fusion and Wario Land 4.

6 hours ago, VincentASM said:

Anyway, here I was about to get excited about possible cut characters in Echoes or something ^^;;;

I would have liked/not liked (b/c potential that was not realized) this too. But unused content appears to be shrinking in FE. Awakening had some juicy morsels, but there seemed to be a clear self-consciousness of players hacking into the data with things like the unused map and ending book writings.

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Yeah. I trawl the TCRF wiki, and this sort of thing happens reasonably frequently. The most infamous case was one of the sonic racing games (can't remember which game, though), because they used an image from someone's devientart as a placeholder texture, and forgot to remove it from the final game, with the result that fanart remains uncredited in the versions that they couldn't patch.

Another weird example is the gba pokmon games. THey have an unused sprite that is an upgraded version of a sprite from "Mendel palace", an NES game developed by gamefreak.

There is also the "SNES test program", a special cart which was used by maintenance people to diagnose problems with people's SNESs. It has a ton of unused assets that appear to be beta sprites for Super Mario World. (many of which are no longer in the final version of that game.

Edited by sirmola
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2 minutes ago, sirmola said:

Yeah. I trawl the TCRF wiki, and this sort of thing happens reasonably frequently. The most infamous case was one of the sonic racing games (can't remember which game, though), because they used an image from someone's devientart as a placeholder texture, and forgot to remove it from the final game, with the result that fanart remains uncredited in the versions that they couldn't patch.

Another weird example is the gba pokmon games. THey have an unused sprite that is an upgraded version of a sprite from "Mendel palace", an NES game developed by gamefreak.

There is also the "SNES test program", a special cart which was used by maintenance people to diagnose problems with people's SNESs. It has a ton of unused assets that appear to be beta sprites for Super Mario World. (many of which are no longer in the final version of that game.

a fun one is crash bash

the portraits for the bosses in one fight were homer and bart in an earlier version

spyro 3 lets you play a demo of crash bash but in the demo you can use a code to play an unfinished version of basically the whole game

this means that bart and homer's faces can actually be seen in spyro 3

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i wonder if this kind of stuff can put the publisher in any trouble. It's unused, but it's still distribution of copyrighted files. I'm guessing not; I don't see Sony grilling SEGA for including unused Nintendo system graphics in a Vita game.

Also, IS using an unofficial patching tool? This feels kind of weird, especially since IS makes 3DS development kits themselves. What's next? Using ROMs from online sources to make Virtual Console games? Downloading music from YouTube to make OSTs?

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44 minutes ago, nocturnal YL said:

What's next? Using ROMs from online sources to make Virtual Console games?

From what i heard, there is strong evidence that they did just that. THe header of a mario rom on vc was identical to one that was circulating the internet, and the header tends to change for different dumps (headers don't effect gameplay).

I'm pretty sure that it's just vincent using that patching tool to show us the content, though.

Edited by sirmola
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