Mario Kart DS

Mario Kart DS
Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo DS Released in JP: December 8, 2005 Released in US: November 14, 2005 Released in EU: November 25, 2005 Released in AU: November 17, 2005 Released in KR: April 5, 2007 This game has unused areas. This game has unused code. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused music. This game has regional differences. This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article This game has a notes page This game has a bugs page

Mario Kart DS is one of the most popular games on the DS as well as one of the best selling Mario Kart games of all time. It's also the Mario Kart game that introduced the Retro Grand Prix, which has since become a series staple.

There is some additional information relating to this game's development on the Mario Kart Wii page.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

To do: Two unused Archives with early Karts and Characters here and here. A number of unused and early objects. More unused graphics. Add documentation for the unused Ice collision type.

Sub-Pages

Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Notes

Bugs

Unused Courses Long-forgotten circuits never to be driven on again.

Early Karts Some earlier versions of familiar karts along with some completely new ones.

Early Objects Early versions of a lot of junk on the road that didn't quite make the final cut.

Unused Graphics An artist's work is never done.

Post-Final Demo Version Mario vs. 7 Shy Guys!

Unused Blur Effect

An unused display capture effect to blur the screen when boosting was found in the code. The final game tries to enable this effect whenever you get a speed boost, but since the blur doesn't get initialized, it gets ignored.

It uses the VRAM used by the ARM7 co-processor in Multiplayer modes, so it's likely that it would have only worked in Single Player Modes. This, and the fact that it can be both disorienting and distracting likely contributed to it getting scrapped.

It can be enabled through an AR code made by Gericom for the EU region of the game.

Enable Blur (Single Player Only) (EU):

121548DC 00000000
121548DE 00000008
2203AE78 00000002
0205612C 00000000
02056130 00000000
02056134 00000000

(discovery: Gericom)

Unused Camera Sequences

To do: There could be more.

Luigi's Mansion

There is an alternative version of the first camera sequence from Luigi's Mansion: a view from the moon and the front side of the mansion, that was replaced by a view through the door.

DK Pass

The second sequence has an alternative version, which is similar to the original sequence, but it has a different angle and was replaced by a more interesting view.

Early Characters

Daisy

Unused	Used

An earlier version of Daisy's CPU model, found in the unused KartModelMain.carc archive. Her head and arms are slightly different, matching her current appearance. The crown of the used model has some pink on it, unlike the unused one.

Shy Guy

Unused	Used

KartModelMain.carc also contains an early CPU model for Shy Guy, which is carried over from the Kiosk Demo. It is very simple and lacks 3D arms and feet. It is also green unlike the final model which is red.

Oddities

Early Delfino Square Remnants

Early	Final

Early	Final

Early	Final

If you go out of bounds in mission 3-2, where you have to drive though gates in reverse on Delfino Square, you will see that there are crates in different positions with additional crates, different than they are in regular racing. This is a remnant from the Kiosk Demo version. However, the two removed crates before the turn to the goal line were reused in Mario Kart Wii and can also be seen in mission 2-1.

Odd Hidden Skyboxes

• 

  Big Bully and Chief Chilly battle (mr_stage1)

• 

  Eyerok and King Bob-Omb battle (mr_stage2)

• 

  King Boo battle (mr_stage3)

For whatever reason, the courses used for the boss battles in mission mode (mr_stage1, mr_stage2 and mr_stage3) have hidden skybox models, that can only be seen in an editor or by using cheat codes to fly out of bounds. They are copies from other skyboxes and doesn't fit the look of these courses at all.

Hidden Bottom Map Graphic

The Paratroopa shaped building in Baby Park cannot normally be seen on the touch screen map because it is too far out of bounds. By using cheats to fly out of bounds, however, it can be seen.

Startup Sound Oversight

To do: Dump the sound effects and put them in the table.

When the game is starting up, on the Nintendo/ESRB Online notice splash screen, there can be various different outcomes of what sound effects play. The game chooses between 2 short "vroom" sounds or one long one, followed by Mario saying either "Here we go!" or "Yahoo!" based on two values derived from a random number generator, specifically a Linear Congruential Generator. Unfortunately, potentially as an oversight, instead of the results of this RNG being random, it is seeded with the exact same seed every time: 0x12345678. Because of this, the sequence of random numbers generated will always be the same leading to the same results every time, controlling for all other factors (model of DS, use of Action Replay, etc). While the load times for the games can be modified by the milliseconds by something like an action replay or using a different DS model (as there is slight differences in the game's load time between models), and this can cause a different sequence of sound effects to play, if those same actions are repeated it will lead to the same sounds playing each time. A table showing the values that choose which sounds play is shown below.

0-20	21-100
Long "Vroom"	"Yahoo"
Two Short "Vroom"s	"Here we go!"

(Source: Prof9 (Twitter))

Early Content in Course Previews

To do: List the other differences.

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this.

Some course previews contain stuff that was changed in the final game.

xxxx

Airship Fortress has the early Bullet Bill designs.

xxxx

GCN Mushroom Bridge has the FLESH trucks.

GCN Baby Park is missing the yellow vertex color in the sides of the road.

Removed Missions

The file mission.mr is a table containing configurations for missions. However there are 28 entries never used by the game, because they were scrapped. Note that MR stands for Mission Run.

Mission Name	Mission Task	Driver	Course	Time Limit	Notes
mr01	Drive Through Gates	Yoshi	GCN Yoshi Circuit	00:25:00	This is a scrapped mission from the Kiosk Demo.
mr05	Collect 50 Coins	Luigi	SNES Mario Circuit 1	01:00:00	Another scrapped mission from the Kiosk Demo. Interestingly, Luigi uses his Poltergust 4000, although in missions in the final version, the drivers only use their Standard Kart.
mr16	Collect 30 Coins	Peach	Peach Gardens	00:55:00
mr18	Drive 2 Laps	Mario	Rainbow Road	01:00:00
mr19	Destroy 5 (moving) Item Boxes	Luigi	Figure 8 Circuit	01:00:00
mr22	Collect 20 Coins	Bowser	SNES Koopa Beach 2	01:00:00
mr23	Defeat 10 Goombas	Toad	Mario Circuit	01:00:00	Seems to be an early version of Mission 7-4
mr24	Boss Battle	Donkey Kong	MR_stage1 (Big Bully Arena)	05:00:00	Also uses an unused setting, where the camera is slightly zoomed out
mr30	Drive 2 Laps	Wario	N64 Banshee Boardwalk	01:10:00
mr31	Do 8 Power Slides	Peach	GBA Peach Circuit	00:40:00
mr32	Collect 15 Coins	Donkey Kong	Delfino Square	00:15:00
mr36	Defeat 5 crabs	Wario	Cheep Cheep Beach	00:55:00	Seems to be an early version of Mission 1-4
mr42	Drive Through 10 Gates	Luigi	GBA Luigi Circuit	01:00:00
mr45	Drive 1 Lap	Donkey Kong	Figure 8 Circuit	01:30:00
mr46	Drive 3 Laps	Mario	SNES Mario Circuit 1	01:00:00	Uses an unused setting, where the track is in Mirror Mode
mr52	Collect 1 Coin	Luigi	MR_stage4	05:00:00	Collect 1 Coin with Luigi, might have been a test for the coin collecting missions.
mr56	Destroy 8 (moving) Item Boxes	Bowser	N64 Choco Mountain	01:00:00
mr57	Drive Through 10 Gates	Donkey Kong	Yoshi Falls	00:50:00
mr58	Destroy 15 Item Boxes	Toad	Bowser's Castle	01:00:00
mr59	Collect 12 Coins	Yoshi	GCN Mushroom Bridge	01:00:00
mr63	Destroy 10 Item Boxes	Wario	Wario Stadium	01:10:00
mr65	Do 10 Power Slides	Mario	Mario Circuit	01:05:00
mr67	Destroy 4 rolling Snowballs	Peach	DK Pass	01:20:00
mr68	Reach the finish before Luigi	Yoshi	Luigi's Mansion
mr71	Destroy 20 Crates	Yoshi	Airship Fortress	01:10:00
mr73	Destroy 10 moving Item Boxes	Donkey Kong	Tick Tock Clock	01:00:00
mr74	Defeat 15 snowmans	Peach	N64 Frappe Snowland	01:00:00	The Snowman object has an unused setting where it won't respawn after breaking it. It seems to have been intended for this mission.
mr87	Destroy 10 Item Boxes	Luigi	Delfino Square	02:00:00

Road Collision Oddity

The collision ID used for the roads in Waluigi Pinball and Mushroom Bridge is same as used in the USA demo, despite the fact that it produces a metallic sound in the demo and the normal road sound in the final. This is because rather than changing the collision ID in the KCL (collision model) the metal road sound sequence data was overwritten with the normal road sound sequence data.

(Source: Ambiance)

In the SSAR sequence data, in SSAR 0 and 1, sequence numbers 84 and 143 belong to the normal asphalt road, and 98 and 154 are the same but belong to the metal road (Waluigi Pinball).

Unused Object Settings

The Mission Coin object is able to follow a specified path, with its Setting 1 specifying the speed, however no mission uses this feature.

Build Date

There is a file named BUILDDATE in the //data/boot/ folder, which contains the date and time the game was compiled:

Version	Build Date
Europe	Build: 2005 10/8(Sat) 23:05:54
US	Build: 2005 10/8(Sat) 23:09:34
Japan	Build: 2005 10/17(Mon) 20:12:19
Japan (Demo)	Build: 2005 11/15(Tue) 11:11:10
Korea	Build: 2007 2/21(Wed) 19:59:37

Unused Menu Music

There is an unused sequence for a menu in the sound data of the game, called SSEQ_0005. It is one track away from the records screen, so it might have been used there. It has a resemblance to the Wi-Fi menu theme, and the settings theme too.

To hear this sequence on the title screen, use Action Replay code 121DB4A4 000001B0 (US).

Development Text

NitroKart Ghost Data Test 01

Located in the ARM9 binary is text, regarding a Ghost Data test, which suggests the internal project name of the game was "NitroKart".

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Memory Filler

To do: Check if this is really unused. The staff ghosts also contains this ASCII art for kart symbols

Mario Kart DS seems to pad out certain parts of memory with repeated instances of cute ASCII art which depicts Mario from Super Mario Bros.

     UUUUU      
     UUUUU      
    UUUUUUUUU   
    UUUUUUUUU   
    DDD..D.     
    DDD..D.     
   D.D...D...   
   D.D...D...   
   D.DD...D...  
   D DD...D...  
   DD....DDDD   
   DD....DDDD   
     .......    
     .......    
    DDUDDD      
    DDUDDD      
   DDDUDDUDDD   
   DDDUDDUDDD   
  DDDDUUUUDDDD  
  DDDDUUUUDDDD  
  ..DU.UU.UD..  
  ..DU.UU.UD..  
  ...UUUUUU...  
  ...UUUUUU...  
  ..UUUUUUUU..  
  ..UUUUUUUU..  
    UUU  UUU    
    UUU  UUU    
   DDD    DDD   
   DDD    DDD  
  DDDD    DDDD  

Regional Differences

Main Menu

International	Japan	Korea

Wi-Fi mode is labeled as "Nintendo WFC" in the International versions and "Wi-Fi" in the Japanese version. The Korean title screen has the copyright year as 2005-2007. This is because Mario Kart DS's Korean release year was 2007 rather than in 2005, like every other version.

R.O.B.

The most blatant regional differences involve R.O.B.

International	Japan

In the International versions, R.O.B. is colored dark grey (the general color of the NES), while in the Japanese version he is white and red (the colors of the Family Computer). Additionally, he is called HVC-012 in the Japanese version.

International	Japan

The ROB-LGS kart was similarly recolored.

International	Japan

...As were his icons.

International	Japan

The title screen that appears after you beat the game was also changed. It's worth noting, however, that these changes aren't actually a direct replacement of any files - viewing a Time Trial ghost replay or playing multiplayer with a different version of the game will allow you to see both R.O.B. and HVC-012 at the same time. This is most apparent when viewing/racing a staff ghost using HVC-012 in the International versions of the game.

VS Screen Computer Names

International	Japan	Korea

The names for the computer players in the Japanese and Korean versions as well as the German locale of the International version are COM then a number, whereas the names in the US and European versions are ORDI then a number for French locale and CPU then a number for other locales.

Pre-Game Note

North America	International

In the North American version of the game, before showing the title screen, a note will appear saying "ESRB NOTICE: Game Experience May Change During Online Play.", whereas in the other versions (European, Japanese and Korean) the note says, "All rights, including copyright of Game, Scenario, Music and Program, reserved by NINTENDO." The North American text is in bold, whilst the other text isn't. The International copyright screen also has incorrect grammar.

Course Names

Some tracks and karts have different names depending on the region. Retro courses keep their original localised names in each region.

English-Speaking Countries	Japan
Figure-8 Circuit	Eight-Cross Circuit
Cheep Cheep Beach	Pukupuku Beach
Luigi's Mansion	Luigi Mansion
Desert Hills	Sun Sun Desert
Delfino Square	Monte Town
Shroom Ridge	Kinoko Ridgeway
DK Pass	DK Snow Mountain
Airship Fortress	Killer Ship
Peach Gardens	Peach Garden
Bowser Castle	Koopa Castle
Palm Shore	Southern Reef
Tart Top	Sweet Tart

Kart Names

English-Speaking Countries	Japan
B Dasher	B Dash
Poltergust 4000	Ovacuum
Streamliner	Steamline
Royale	Peerless
Light Tripper	Light Step PC
Mushmellow	Mush
Standard TD	Standard KO
Rambi Rider	Jungle Cargo
Brute	Brutal
Standard BW	Standard KP
Power Flower	Flowery
Light Dancer	Light Step DS
Banisher	Banish
Standard DB	Standard KA
Dry Bomber	Karon Cannon
Zipper	Tripper
ROB-BLS	HVC-BLS
ROB-LGS	HVC-LGS

(Source: The Mushroom Kingdom)

Unused Menu Archive

There is an unused archive called "KartModelMenu.carc" that was apparently planned to be used to house the models and textures of the karts and drivers on the selection menu.

Unused HUD Palette

In the palette files for the global maps of unused courses (which are copies of an early GCN Yoshi Circuit minimap), There are unused Palette rows used in the E3 2004 prototype.

Palette row 0 is empty, palette row 1 is used by the actual map, while palette rows 2, 3, 4 and 5 are E3 2004 leftovers; palette row 2 contains the palette for the "TIME" and "LAP" labels. Palette rows 3 and 4 have 8 sets of blue and a set of yellow colors used on the rank list. Palette 5 is from when the global map BG was baked into the same file as the global map it's self, this is no longer the case in the Kiosk Demos, or Final game, so this palette goes unused as well.

There being 8 sets of the same shades of blue in palette rows 3 & 4 may suggest that each player was going to have their own color on the rank list.

Unused Grand Prix Intro Graphic

Palette: //data/Scene/Race_gp.carc/race_start_gp_m_o.NCLR

Texture: //data/Scene/Race_gp.carc/race_start_gp_m_o.NCGR

This seems to be a graphic that was used for the course titles' background in the course intro. The NCGR file is empty, but editing it will show a background behind the course's name in the intro.

The graphic uses the first line of the palette file above (shown below).

Trophy Screen Place Marker Oddity

Early results screen where the 1st place marker has "FIRST" written under. This label still exists in the final, but the graphics are blanked out.

Final tileset for the results screen, showing where the labels are supposed to be in.

In the USA and EU (multiplayer) Kiosk Demo versions of the game, the place marker in the trophy screen has labels under them:

• 1st = FIRST
• 2nd = SECOND
• 3rd = THIRD
• 4th = FOURTH
• 5th = FIFTH
• 6th = SIXTH
• 7th = SEVENTH
• 8th = EIGHTH

The labels actually still exist in the final version, only its graphics are blanked out. Their OAM data, as well the tiles reserved for them, are intact.

This suggests that the labels were removed late in development.

Hidden Code

If you press Up, Down, L, R, Y, A in the Time Trials records, a 16 character code with information on your ghost will appear. This was used for an official contest held by Nintendo's Japanese website, like in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!.

A fan-made decoder is available online.