If you appreciate the work done within the wiki, please consider supporting The Cutting Room Floor on Patreon. Thanks for all your support!

Käpt'n Blaubär: Die verrückte Schatzsuche

From The Cutting Room Floor
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Title Screen

Käpt'n Blaubär: Die verrückte Schatzsuche

Developers: Similis, Shin'en Multimedia
Publisher: Ravensburger Interactive
Platform: Game Boy Color
Released in DE: January 10, 2001


DevMessageIcon.png This game has a hidden developer message.
CopyrightIcon.png This game has hidden developer credits.
DevTextIcon.png This game has hidden development-related text.
GraphicsIcon.png This game has unused graphics.
TextIcon.png This game has unused text.


Käpt'n Blaubär: Die verrückte Schatzsuche is a German-exclusive puzzle game featuring Käpt'n Blaubär, better unknown in English as Captain Bluebear, a blue bear who is also a ship's captain.

Sound Credits

Martin Wodok's sound engine and Manfred Linzner's compositions are credited at 0x20030.

GHX Sound Engine
   Ver.00530    
(c) 2000 SHIN´EN
 Code: M. Wodok 
Music: M.Linzner

Song Index

Located at 0x23193 is an index of songs and their names that may suggest a sound test.

SONG
0: EMPTY............
01: START LEVEL.....
02: LEVEL SELECT....
03: LEVEL OK........
04: OPTIONS.........
05: MAIN TUNE.......
06: MAP.............
07: SHINEN..........
08: SHINEN WEG......
09: TITLE BILD......
10: INSEL 0.........

The text found in the game has no line breaks, so some are inserted manually here. Also, those periods really are periods. 2E and everything.

DMG Font Characters

KaptnBlaubar-GBC-UnusedFont.png

About half of the font at 0x23600, used for the GBC-only screen on monochrome Game Boys, is never seen. In addition to the F, Q and Ö (not shown), all of the digits and most of the punctuation is unused. Some of these glyphs are relatively nonstandard and include a sword, a smiley face and various arrows.

Level Names

The puzzle maps in the game are uncompressed and essentially "human-readable": each is simply a 16*15 grid of bytes, which lines up with the traditional 16-column view in hex editors. As such, the stage in a hex editor is recognizably similar to the way it appears in the game, at the expense of a massive amount of space that's simply not used. Notably, each stage also has a name in its header; and they're in English, to (das) boot! Individual stages aren't named during gameplay, and it appears the developers stopped giving them unique internal names after a certain point as they eventually start repeating heavily.

An additional oddity is that Todesklippe stage 11 and Schatzinsel stage 1 (both SKULKER internally) are exactly the same puzzle.

KaptnBlaubar-GBC-Todesklippe11.png
KaptnBlaubar-GBC-Schatzinsel1.png
Todesklippe stage 11 Schatzinsel stage 1

The first set of puzzle maps is found from 0x30000-0x32CFF and the second runs from 0x34000-0x36CFF.

Klippen Küste Todesklippe Klaubauter Eiland Stieffelolmen Riff Seeschweine Bucht Schatzinsel
01
THE BEGINNING
A BIT TRICKY 
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
   SKULKER   
02
 STILL EASY! 
  HANDSOME   
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
BRIDGES 4 YOU
03
BROKEN ARROW 
STAY A WHILE!
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
 TURN AROUND 
04
   FOOLED!   
THE LETTERMAN
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
MO SPIRALS   
05
  WALKABOUT  
BAD FISH     
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
KEYS ON KNEES
06
TWICE THE FUN
GOOD FISH    
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
KEYS ON KNEES
07
DR.JONES SHIP
THE SPACESHIP
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
KEYS ON KNEES
08
THE LOCK     
KEYS ON KNEES
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
  SANDHOME   
09
THE LOCK     
DUAL CREW    
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
KEYS ON KNEES
10
STAY A WHILE!
KEYS ON KNEES
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
OLYMPIA      
11
KEYS ON KNEES
   SKULKER   
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
THE LOCK     
12
 TURN OR DIE!
 TURN OR DIE!
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
THE LOCK     
13
TOXICS SPIRAL
THE LOCK     
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
THE LOCK     
14
ROXBOX       
STAY FOREVER!
STAY FOREVER!
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
THE LOCK     
15
ROXBOX       
MAZE-O-MANIA 
STARBUST     
BACK FOR GOOD
KEYS ON KNEES
THE LOCK     

Several of these stage names appear to be references to games and scene groups. TURN OR DIE! may be a reference to the classic game Skate or Die!, STAY A WHILE! and STAY FOREVER! refer to the famous digitized vocal line in Impossible Mission and DUAL CREW is a scene group active at the same time as Abyss (see below).

Nasenbär Insel stage select

Nasenbär Insel has a fully functional stage select screen and even graphics for its name (it's not a font). Trying to load a stage either crashes the game or loads a bunch of garbage. Not really suprising as there are no stages for this world.

KaptnBlaubar-GBC-Nasenbar-Select.png

Reference to Shin'en's Origins

Shin'en began as the scene group Abyss. Spanning from 0x80000-0x83FFF in the ROM is the repeating string AYS!. Readers can copy and paste that 4096 times to get an impression of what it might look like.

(Source: devin)