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La-Mulana (2006)

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Title Screen

La-Mulana

Developer: GR3Project[1]
Publisher: GR3Project[1]
Platform: Windows
Released in JP: June 27, 2006[1]


CodeIcon.png This game has unused code.
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.
SoundIcon.png This game has unused sounds.
TextIcon.png This game has unused text.
Carts.png This game has revisional differences.


DevelopmentIcon.png This game has a development article
ProtoIcon.png This game has a prototype article
PrereleaseIcon.png This game has a prerelease article
NotesIcon.png This game has a notes page
DataIcon.png This game has a data page
BugsIcon.png This game has a bugs page

La-Mulana is an indie Metroidvania-like about an Indiana Jones lookalike exploring some ruins. Intended as a tribute to a lot of MSX games, it eventually got a remake that ended up more popular than the original thing.

Sub-Pages

Read about development information and materials for this game.
Development Info
Read about prototype versions of this game that have been released or dumped.
Prototype Info
Read about prerelease information and/or media for this game.
Prerelease Info
Miscellaneous tidbits that are interesting enough to point out here.
Notes
Notes on the game's internal data.
Data
Read about notable bugs and errors in this game.
Bugs

Leftover Demo Sprites

All of these can be found inside the image/ folder.

Older Sub-Weapon

LaMulana-ArrowLeftover.png

The Arrow is the first sub-weapon obtainable in the Demo. It was replaced by the Shuriken in the final game, reflected even by its slot in item.bmp. However, the arrow sprites remain in prot0.bmp.

Horizontal Spears

They were probably planning ahead.

Although the Spear sub-weapon can never be fired from the sides, there are sprites for doing so in prot0.bmp; in the Demo, that file has sprites for all sub-weapons other than the Arrow in all directions like this, even though they weren't implemented yet.

Ammo Counter

LaMulana-CounterLeftover.png This X mark used for counting the sub-weapons' ammo in the Demo was not used in the final, but it can still be found in item.bmp.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Stone Tablet Drawings

There are four images intended to be used in stone tablets left unused in image/. The first three are leftovers from the Demo found in eveg00.bmp and eveg22.bmp, files with the Surface's object sprites.

LaMulana-Tablet1.png

Angels, one of them carrying a bag of sorts. The puzzle associated with it is in the final game, but since it was transmitted by a skeleton (those don't use tablet drawings) and an NPC instead, its image was scrapped. It also contains Mulanese letters, but most of them are illegible; the only one that can be made out is "se" at the end of the middle ones, with a part of the E glyph missing.

The Mulanese se glyph, for reference.
LaMulana-Tablet2.png

Four stars around a ladder and many circles, likely the phases of the moon, as well as more illegible (save for 代 at the right) Mulanese letters to the sides.

The Mulanese 代 glyph, for reference.
A knight? Near a...stone with a motorcycle helmet on it?

What this was supposed to represent and why it was scrapped is unknown.

LaMulana-Tablet4.png

This last image is in the file with the Chamber of Extinction's object sprites, eveg06.bmp, depicting a mural and the Pochette Key. Probably meant for a tablet that does mention said item, but the same tablet just uses the previous image in the file, rendering this one unused.

(Source: La-Mulana Wiki)

Scrapped Stage Graphic

LaMulana-UnusedTileset.png

image/mapg03.bmp, the file with the Temple of the Sun's tileset graphics, has a chunk of tiles not seen anywhere in the game. It depicts Ellmac, the area's Guardian with two wolves besides it along two blue circles, what looks like an Egyptian symbol and mysterious glyphs above it - whether they are Mulanese glyphs or not is unknown.

(Source: Gmestanley)

Leftover Sound Effect

The sound effect made by the Demo's equivalent of the Shuriken sub-weapon can still be found in the sound/ folder as se1A_01.wav.

Internal Music Track Text

The .sgt files in music/, used for the SSCC versions of the game's music tracks, still contain a lot of interesting information about them inside. It can be found in their internal titles and a chunk called "Information" here after the track section of the same name in DirectMusic Producer, the program used to make these files. Tracks that have the same title as the filename or the album name and nothing else will not be included.

Filename Album Name Internal Title Title Notes Information Information Notes
m00.sgt Mr. Explorer field0 Project Sanbiki
Savage Jungle
"Sanbiki" (三匹) is a name that Nigoro uses to refer to all its main members, also found in the executable's properties as "3hiki". The second line is possibly an early name for the track.
m01.sgt Fearless challenger mechibiki_nm Since this track belongs to an area called 導きの門 (Michibiki no Mon, "Gate of Guidance"), this title was likely referring to its romanization.
m02.sgt Grand History field2
m03.sgt Curse of IRON PIPE Fish and Iron pipe Also possibly an early name for the track.
m04.sgt Sacred Tomb field4
m05.sgt Inferno m05 Start of Setup by GSAE
End of Setup by GSAE
**
It's unknown why there are asterisks at the end. GSAE is GS Advanced Editor, an interfacing software compatible with Roland's Sound Canvas SC-88, which was used to make the soundtrack and is mentioned by the System Window menu.
m09.sgt Mother will be awakened Mother Name of the music track that was going to be used instead of this one.
m10.sgt Awaking Lamulana -Final Chapter- Gr3Project
m14.sgt Moon Light Dance Moon Light Dancing Also a possible early name. La-Mulana 月光聖殿 月光聖殿 (Gekkō Shinden) is the Japanese name of the Temple of Moonlight area, in which the track plays.
m16.sgt Song of Curry Yami1 Yami (闇) means "darkness". It might have to do with the Chamber of Birth (the area that the track plays in) being the backside of the Chamber of Extinction, which is a pretty dark place. Song Of Carry -カレーのうた-  LAMULANA -DARK PALACE- ProjectGR3 By.Samieru By far the biggest information here. It has a misspelling of the name caused by the word's spelling in Japanese, the developer's name from the time in reverse order, a credit to the composer and the aforementioned area being called "Dark Palace". While there's no such place in the game, said area was commonly referred to by the developers as "that dark place", so it could be a misspelling of that too.
m19.sgt GAME OVER GAMEOVER Filename of the .sgt file in the Demo.
m20.sgt Requiem Ank Ditto.
m23.sgt King Konda boss01 Ditto. 遺跡表層部ボス
**
More unexplained asterisks. The Japanese text translates to "Ruins Surface Area Boss".
m24.sgt Giant's Rage Giant's Rage oresama オレ様, an arrogant variant of the first person pronoun 俺 (Ore).
m39.sgt Fearless challenger -long version- mechibiki1 Ditto with m01, with the same romanization of 導き.
m40.sgt Good Night Mom last_boss_sgt2
m43.sgt March "Pomp and Circumstance" -Aerial Battle Theme- m44 One number ahead of the actual filename for some reason.
m44.sgt Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -Theme of Star 573- pr3_3 The reason for the "_3" suffix is unknown. PR3 STAGE
m49.sgt Maze of Galious -CASTLE- GaliousCastle
m50.sgt Maze of Galious -WORLD- GaliousWorld
m51.sgt Maze of Galious -God- m51
Data programmed by M.Suenaga
(Source: La-Mulana Discord (Newigeg (Internal Titles), mysterypalace (Existence of the Information text)), Gmestanley (The text itself), Ferase#4246 (GSAE's Identity))
(Japanese Text Decoding: Punk7890)

Unused Text

Text Translation
人のてにより生みだされたいつわりの母であるジョカ。
うごけぬ体のねもとをたたけ。
Nüwa, the false Mother born of human hands.
Strike the root of her unmoving body.

Stone tablet text in data/script.dat at offset 0x8D6B hinting at how to defeat the sub-boss Nüwa, likely not used for being too obvious compared to other hints in the game.

(Source: La-Mulana Wiki)

 SSCC   SC88
This string is also inside lamulana.exe, the executable itself, at offset 0BD828. It was meant for when neither option of the Music Mode setting is selected and there is code for that at segment 08CD1C-08CD27, but you cannot do that in-game; you can only select between either options as the code for this option consists for a simple check as to whether, and SSCC is already chosen by default, so both the code and the string are rendered unused.

(Source: Gmestanley)

Unused Dialog Box

Segment 0C0DD8-0C0E57 of lamulana.exe contains a rather odd dialog box, with only the plain-looking options "OK", "キャンセル" (Cancel) and a title of "ダイアログ" (Dialog) written in MS PGothic. This is notably absent in the executable of Aeon Genesis' English fan-translation from 2007, which was made by the director of the game Naramura himself; the translator credits him for "EXE hacking" and it has different compiler information (the Rich header has the mask 0x6AB503A8 as opposed to the original Japanese version's 0xA36414F7 and the internal timestamp is also later, 1/9/2007 00:59:49 UTC), indicating that he re-compiled the source code for it. Due to this and the fact that it's not called anywhere in the file, it was likely not meant to be shown.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Obscured Oddity

Pressing a number key from 0 to 6 in the F5 menu sets the sound effects' volume to a specific number, decreasing it by 5 digits from 100 to 60. Strangely, the menu only reflects this change the next time you open it. This is not even explained by the game's manual, but an image used there explains it as a leftover from its time, since that has a music option that fits this behavior.

(Source: Gmestanley)

Version Differences

After the game's release, GR3Project still put out some revisions where needed. Strangely, the version number is still 1.0.0.1 in all executables available, so they will be categorized here by their release dates.

07/15

According to GR3Project[2] on August 13th, a "second" update was released on July 15, 2006.

  • Changes were made to the executable.*
  • "Other bugs were fixed."
  • A crash in the Hell Temple area was fixed.

* Since this version is not available, it's impossible to verify specifics of this.

07/22

While there's no physical evidence of the above update, an executable with an internal timestamp from way later than that update's release to be it (0x44C1051A, 7/21/2006 16:47:22 UTC) and modified date of July 22nd can be found in the archive of GR3Project's website, but there's no evidence of it ever being announced there. Because of this, there's currently no changelog for it either.

(Source: Gmestanley)

08/23

Elementary, my dear Cactus.
This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: Offsets 027893 and 0278AB also had a value of 0x4B changed to 0x36, but the worth of this needs to be verified. Further in is code for displaying Music Mode text; see if that mode is related.

The final update made for the game, published on August 23rd.[3] Its announcement on GR3Project's website doesn't specify what changes were made. One difference that lamulana.exe has from the previous version's executable is that its internal timestamp was changed to 0x44E749B6, 8/19/2006 (17:26:14 UTC), a date way earlier than the one when it was actually released.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 GR3 PROJECT - GR3Project "06/27 LA-MULANA完成版公開。"
  2. GR3 PROJECT - GR3Project "07/15 最終修正ファイル第二弾きゃはー!"
  3. GR3 PROJECT - GR3Project "08/23 LA-MULANA最終修正。"