Digimon Battle Spirit

Digimon Battle Spirit
Developer: Dimps Publisher: Bandai Platform: Game Boy Advance Released in US: January 13, 2003 Released in EU: September 5, 2003 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has regional differences.

Digimon Battle Spirit is a one-on-one fighting game based on the first three seasons of the Digimon anime. It's also a bare-bones port of the Japan-only WonderSwan Color game Digimon Tamers: Battle Spirit.

Despite the GBA's superior hardware, the game still looks and sounds just like a WSC game, even preserving that system's lower resolution with a permanent border.

To do: Confirm that the Calumon sprite in both languages' option menu graphics is actually used.

Regional Differences

Digivolution Music

When a Digimon digivolves during battle, the WonderSwan version plays one of three different themes: shortened instrumental renditions of the songs "Brave Heart", "Beat Hit!", and "EVO" from the Japanese version of the anime.

While all three still exist in the port, they're not used in-game and cannot be listened to using the sound test.

US/Europe	Japan

(Source: xdaniel (entire section))

Unused Graphics

D-Ark Menu Option

Tiles and sprite data for a "D-Ark" menu option, for linking up to D-Ark Digivice toys, are left unused in the GBA version. The sprites have just been moved off screen. This menu option was only used in the Japanese-language mode of the original WonderSwan game, while the English-language mode omitted the option there as well.

The option can be displayed by modifying the menu's sprite data in the ROM (change value at 0x90B5E to 0x3C, at 0x90B62 to 0x54, and at 0x90B66 to 0x6C), but remains non-functional.

Japanese Leftovers

While many graphics from the original WonderSwan version have been removed, some are still present in the GBA port: tiles (and possibly sprite data) for the stage names in multiplayer mode and the options menu still survive at 0x9E100 and 0x9FCA8 in the ROM.

(Source: xdaniel (entire section))

Development Text

Carried over from the WonderSwan game is a version string for a presumed Dimps tool at 0x1F9D4:

DIMPS Ver0.72

(Source: Vague Rant (entire section))