Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Also known as: Hoshi no Kirby 64 (JP) Developer: HAL Laboratory Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo 64 Released in JP: March 24, 2000 Released in US: June 26, 2000 Released in EU: June 22, 2001 Released in AU: 2001 This game has unused areas. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences. This game has a prerelease article

To do: Lots of dev text There are four (!) Japanese versions. Rev 0/original, Rev 1, Rev 2 and Rev 3. There's some documentation on these pages: 1, 2.

Eating enemies, floating around, fighting disembodied eyeballs... a Kirby game, except this one is in 2.5D and you can combine powers.

Sub-Pages

Prerelease Info

Unused Graphics

Early Art

Present at 0x9D8CC0 in the US version is some very, very early art.

Image in-Game	Pre-release Picture

A similar set of portraits can be seen in use in early pre-release shots. Most notably, Kirby's animal friends were apparently meant to be in the game. In the final game, they only appear in a small cameo with the Stone and Cutter combination.

The numbers under "Kirby 64" could be a date. If so, it would be October 30, 1998, nearly a year and a half before the game's Japanese release. This would also align with the developers stating that they started work on the game shortly before Kirby's Dream Land 3 released in 1997.

Unused HUD

Among the graphics of the different HUD displays is this strange HUD of some sort that might be related to debugging.

Early Pop Star Forest Bush

Unused	Used

Hidden outside the skybox in Adeleine's introduction cutscenes are several bushes, one of which uses a different texture from the others. The normal bushes are given color through the use of shaders, but the unique bush has a colored texture. This is likely what all of the bushes in Pop Star stage 2 looked like earlier in development.

Unused Texture Transparency

Two of the textures in King Dedede's castle have transparency data that is not used by the game. The square wave pattern texture, used on multiple walls in the castle, could have doubled as battlements by hiding the top half of the pattern. The stained glass window texture has transparency for all of the black parts, which would allow it to be used as a light effect or allow more detailed wall textures to show through from behind. Early footage of the game shows the textures being used without transparency, suggesting that the change was made early on.

Unused Rock Star Boss Platform Design

The texture used by the ring-shaped platform in the Rock Star boss stage is designed to depict two different materials. However, the model only ever uses the bottom-right half of the texture, leaving the upper-left half unused. The shading suggests that this half may have been intended for the larger portions of the platform. The appearance of the material does not resemble any of the other materials used in any Rock Star stage.

Unused Test Rooms

Enter the GameShark code 810D1F9A ????, where "????" is one of the below. This will replace Pop Star's first level.

Value	Internal Name	Room Description
1E30	ABE200	A plain green room with Adeleine. That's it.
1E54	ABE100	A wide open area for testing different kinds of terrain. Each colored square uses a different material, and is labeled in Japanese. There are some occasional blocks. The materials are, from left to right: Ice (コオリ), Snow (ユキ), Sand (スナ), Wood (キ), Cloud (クモ), Grass (クサ), Iron (テツ), Mud (ドロ), Slippery (スベリ).
1EE4	ENETEST1	Completely empty, so Kirby falls forever in a grey void. The name indicates that it may have been used to test enemy behavior.
1F08	ENETEST2	A large room with a high ceiling and a painfully colorful grid on the back wall. The name indicates that it may have been used to test enemy behavior.
1F2C	ITEM01	A very wide room that contains a lot of food and some Invincibility Candies, Yellow Stars, and Blue Stars. There are blocks and pools of water, but they have no collision.
1F50	BREAKTEST1	A basic room with some blocks to jump on. Some kind of broken background effect is used here, causing a white wavy texture to be overlaid in front of everything.

On a side note, 1E9C (EXERCISE0) contains the How to Play demo. Interestingly, all the demos are in one room!

Unused Audio

To do: A few more unused fanfares allegedly exist in the Sound Test. Check to make sure. Look at Sound Effects 396 and 397 in the Sound Check

The Sound Check, available after beating the game, contains a handful of unused tracks. It also lists the game's songs in a different order than the official soundtrack, likely the order they were implemented into the game.

Unused Music

An arrangement of the first animal friends theme in Kirby's Dream Land 3! It can be accessed as Music 002 in the Sound Check. Given its early placement in the game's files and the presence of the two other animal friends themes as Music 003 and 004 (both used; 003 is used for the Theater menu and 004 is used as a stage theme), they may have been used to test the game's sound format.

The classic victory dance theme of the series. Present as Music 061 in the Sound Check.

A shorter victory dance. Present as Music 062 in the Sound Check, the last entry.

Unused Sounds

いろはにほへと ちりぬるを (Iro ha nihoheto Chirinuru wo)

This is present in the Sound Test. It's the first two phrases of the traditional Japanese poem Iroha, the Japanese equivalent to the ABC song, repeated over and over in a sped-up voice. Due to how it ends, it was likely intended for the TVs in Stage 3 of Shiver Star. Present as Sound Effects 395 in the Sound Check.

Crash Debugger

This game has a crash debugger. To open it, crash the game in some way, then enter this button code:

• Z + R + L
• D-Up + C-Up
• A + D-Left
• B + D-Right
• D-Down + C-Down

The crash debugger consists of three pages. Press Z + R + L to scroll through them. The first page displays the type of crash and the registers, the second page displays a stack trace, and the third page displays different contents depending on the type of crash.

The same crash debugger can also be found in Super Smash Bros. and Pokémon Snap, both of which were also developed by HAL.

(Source: fkualol)

Debug Save Code

There is a cheat code that will set File 3 to 100% completion, presumably for debug purposes. In order to activate it, make it so the save files are in the following state:

• File 1 - doesn't matter
• File 2 - empty
• File 3 - initialized but not started

Reset the game, and when the HAL Laboratory and Nintendo logos appear, hold L on the second controller and enter the following button combo: C-Up, C-Up, R, C-Right, C-Left, and Start. The 1-up sound will play, and when you go to the save file screen, File 3 will be set to 100%. This code works on all the known original N64 versions of the game: Japan Rev. 0 through 3, USA, and Europe. It'll also work on the Wii U Virtual Console and Nintendo Switch Online versions but not the Wii Virtual Console or Kirby's Dream Collection versions since the N64 L Button isn't mapped to anything.

You can see the decompiled source code for the function behind this cheat code here.

(Source: someone2639)

Unseen Geometry

These models/geometry are used in the game, but cannot be seen through normal means.

Extra Tiny Fence Post

In the cutscene where Kirby meets Ribbon, there is a tiny copy of a fence post present in the scene. The extra fence post, which is smaller and more tapered than the other fence posts in the scene, is floating above the ground to Kirby's left. This tiny fence post is visible in the bottom-left portion of the screen when Kirby runs into the sunrise, showing up as one or two brown pixels just beneath the fence beam.

Waddle Dee's Rope

In the rising sand room of the first Rock Star stage, Waddle Dee breaks through the ceiling to give Kirby an exit. Hidden up in the exit hole is a rope model that loads with Waddle Dee. The rope is long enough to reach the floor, but it never moves and is not low enough to be seen. With Kirby's ability to fly, it makes rope unnecessary. Lowering the rope would have given little benefit to the player and would have only slowed down the scene.

Early Dark Matter

In the cutscene after Waddle Doo is defeated, the Dark Matter ball that flies up is a different model from the typical Dark Matter used in other cutscenes. The design resembles Dark Matter's appearance in earlier games, though this exact design is new. The eye is modeled out and protrudes from the body. The whole model uses 512 polygons, which is relatively high-quality for a Nintendo 64 game. Though, some other characters use more.

Regional Differences

Japan	International

Along with a necessary title change, the two copyrights were merged into a single line in the international version.

Japan	International

The fourth HUD option in the Japanese version of the game has an appearance similar to Japanese calligraphy, and replaces all numbers and icons with kanji. The international version changes it to a crayon-drawn theme.

Japan	International

One of the food items is a rice ball in the Japanese version and a sandwich in the international versions, continuing a running theme of removing Japanese foodstuffs. Oddly, Waddle Dee still "eats" an onigiri during the stage-ending picnic sequences in both versions.