Kirby Mass Attack

Kirby Mass Attack
Also known as: Atsumete! Kirby (JP) Developer: HAL Laboratory Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo DS Released in JP: August 4, 2011 Released in US: September 19, 2011 Released in EU: October 28, 2011 Released in AU: October 27, 2011 Released in KR: December 1, 2011 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has regional differences. This game has anti-piracy features.

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Kirby Mass Attack can best be described as Kirby meets Lemmings. Kirby gets split up into 10 smaller (and somehow more adorable) Kirbys that have to work together to destroy enemies, open paths, and get food. It is also the successor of Kirby: Canvas Curse in some ways, and contains unlockable subgames in a variety of genres (including a vertical shoot-'em-up and what's pretty much a remake of Kirby's Pinball Land).

Unused Graphics

To do: There's more sprites to add and other graphics, including graphics intended for remakes of the minigames from Kirby's Adventure; you can find them here.

Unused Palette Swap Feature

It seems you could originally modify Kirby's color, like in Kirby Squeak Squad, but this feature was scrapped fairly early. The graphics for the menu can still be found in the game, though they were never translated from the original Japanese. Available colors would be indigo, cyan, grey, light pink, pink, red, orange, yellow, blue-green, green, purple, dark grey, and beige.

Unused Enemies

UFO, Shuffler, Hammer Knight, and Block Dragon have unfinished shading.

Only Toroppon's cart is fully detailed.

Only the igloo-shaped Pytago sprites are complete. All three have red guidelines on each side.

Spiky, Rocketon, Carryon, Giga Clanksprout and Tortletummy all seem to be finished.

(Source: http://www.spriters-resource.com/ds/kirbymassatk/index.html)

Unused Subgame Elements

There are even some unused elements in the subgames, particularly Strato Patrol EOS, which was to have Plasma Wisp as an enemy and King Dedede as a playable character.

Unused Hint

An unused screen, in Japanese, with a hint about grabbing:

Can't grab on...

While hanging on to a star,
you cannot grab on to other things.

In the game Kirbys can grab things even if they are hanging on to the star, but this hint indicates that might not have always been the case.

Regional Differences

Removed Enemy Credits

The Japanese version has an enemy credits sequence with 35 pictures and Kirby having a picnic that was, for whatever reason, dummied out from all subsequent versions. The untranslated graphics are still in the game files.

Puppon (Beanbon)
Derappon (Big Beanbon)

UtoUto (Snoozroot)
UtoSand (Sand Snoozroot)
UtoPuku (Puffy Snoozroot)
UtoFire (Fire Snoozroot)

Uhho (Oohroo)
Gaburin (Gobchomplin)
Tappi (Twisty)
Sutappi (Grand Twisty)

Spaidio (Spideroo)
MosoMoso (Mossy)
Posura (Slugoo)
Mogi (Moggy)

Dokurodaioh (Skullord)
Dokuron (Skully)
Dokuroshogun (Skullseer)
Dokurosu (Skullion)
Buufuu (Skullig)

Nekurodiasu (Necrodeus)

Kirby

Graphical Changes

Japan	US

The US version of the Strato Patrol EOS minigame's game over screen, instead of localizing "Holy NightMare" to "NightMare Enterprises", simply removes the text entirely and replaces it with a background featuring purple clouds in the likeness of Nightmare himself (or eNeMeE, as he is known in the English dub of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!).

Development Text

The following pieces of development text can be found in the ARM9 binary.

wadogo-00-1f

c:/home/wadogo/data/map.d/map

The "map" folder in the game's filesystem contains the levels.

Internal Project Name

The project's internal name is "wadogo", according to the above development text and the filename of the SDAT file, "WADO_SND_new.sdat". The name also appears in the filenames of some press materials released by Nintendo.

Anti-Piracy

Please elaborate. Having more detail is always a good thing. Specifically: How does the game detect that it's a copy?

To do: Describe the blank screen

After loading the game, it will freeze with a blank screen if it detects that it is a copy.