The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to The Wind Waker, and the opportunity for Nintendo to implement many ideas they couldn't put with Wind Waker or Four Swords Adventures due to the thankfully short-lived deadline policy back then.

Its massive popularity, especially in Japan, resulted in Spirit Tracks.

Unused Rooms
There is an unused "dungeon", internally named "player_dngn", which has four unused rooms that were likely used to test various interactive objects. They can be accessed in the PAL version with the use of Action Replay codes that change the room loaded whenever Link enters a door.

Room 1
94000136 FFFC0000 021B2E94 0000003A 021B2E98 00000000 021B2E9C 00000000 021B2EA4 00000001 D2000000 00000000



Test Room 1 has several entrances in each corner, plus the main entrance and a teleporter. While the blue teleporter and bottom-left invisible teleporter lead to the same room, the main entrance leads to the Great Sea. The bottom-right exit, which is glitched, leads to Test Room 2; a bombable wall in the top-right corner leads there as well, but it's very glitched: on the way back from Test Room 2 to Test Room 1, Link is constantly spawning inside the "door" and sent to Test Room 2, unless the wall hasn't been bombed. Another bombable wall in the top-left corner leads to Test Room 4.

There is a chest with a Force Gem but without text, and a Force Gem panel on the floor nearby. On an elevated platform are three doors from the main dungeon corresponding to each one of the spirits traveling with Link and they are functional. The Sun Gate which required the Sun Key from the sunken chest crashes the game violently. There is a small room with a locked door with a chest inside, which is empty when opened.

Lurking around are Oktorok and bat enemies. There are some "safe zones" from the main dungeon, with the associated red pots. There is a rock. The right side has the bridge used just before the first final boss form, plus many stakes which can be stood on or grappled. The panel from Oshoe's Cave is there, but writing 7 on it won't do anything. Two levers are nearby. On the right area are some slippery iced floors with bats flying around. Nearby is a draggable block, and a color switching block/switch, along some immovable blocks. There is also an event trigger which hangs the game.



Room 2
94000136 FFFC0000 021B2E94 0000003A 021B2E98 00000000 021B2E9C 00000000 021B2EA4 00020000 D2000000 00000000

The main entrance leads to the top-right corner of Test Room 1, but if you already arrived from there Link would be constantly warped back to the second room. There are no enemies here.

This room has oddly textured water, some safe floors from the main dungeon, and three Force Gem floors but no Force Gems, guarded by an open iron door. To the south are some interspaced floors above the water which might be used for auto-jump testing, a switch which does nothing, an odd untextured object, and a closed door.

Cheating your way throughout the room reveals a winding path with a small staircase and two more lowered iron doors. To the east is a small bridge leading to two switches that make the doors raising abnormally high when Link stands on them, but lowering once he gets off them. At the end of the path is a cracked wall. Using a bomb on it makes the "puzzle solved" sound and raises the last gate indefinitely.



Room 3
94000136 FFFC0000 021B2E94 0000003A 021B2E98 00000000 021B2E9C 00000000 021B2EA4 00030000 D2000000 00000000

A wide room with a locked door with nothing behind it, an elevated platform with some pillars, some stairs scattered around the room making it possible to walk atop walls (albeit they form a narrow path). On the top-right and top-left corners are two abnormally high stairs which leads nowhere, making Link fall at the end. There is a large path in the north connecting the two spots, with two warps to other rooms near each of the two stairs. Oddly enough, there is a lower invisible platform slightly off-bounds to the north. The top-left and the top-right warps lead respectively to the cracked top-left and top-right corners of Test Room 1, oddly.

In the southern area, there are two semi-closed square areas each with a pot, and one Force Gem in a buggy chest near the right one. A third completely closed square is nearby.



Room 4
A duplicate of Test Room 3, reachable via the top-left crack in Test Room 1. The main differences are the ridiculously-high walls on the borders of the whole room, and that the stairs now lead to a small curved hallway to the two warps, working exactly like in Test Room 3. The rest of the northern path is replaced with the elevated walls.



Alternate Banner


An alternate/early version of the banner icon displayed on the main Nintendo DS menu.

Regional Differences
The Japanese version has the text centered, unlike the localized versions, which was the case from the N64 games until Skyward Sword. Tapping on kanji with the stylus would reveal their furigana transcriptions in a little bubble, and would not advance the dialogue like in the other versions.

The European version also rewrote some minor portions of the existing English script, in addition to updating a few lines of Wi-Fi text.