Mario Party DS

Mario Party DS
Developers: Hudson Soft, CAProduction Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo DS Released in JP: November 8, 2007 Released in US: November 19, 2007 Released in EU: November 23, 2007 Released in AU: December 6, 2007 Released in KR: May 22, 2008 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused music. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences.

Mario Party DS sticks far closer to the tried-and-true format of the console games, unlike its GBA predecessor, which is to collect stars in order to obtain Superstar status and play against a boss. There are 5 playable maps and 72 minigames. This is also the last Mario Party game to be developed by Hudson Soft.

To do: Images about the regional differences and more details.

Debug Menu

To do: Find working codes for EU/JP Revision 1 versions, can be identified by their build dates that can be found below.

There is a hidden entry in the main menu that goes to a debug menu.
The debug menu is displayed on the touch screen.

Use the Action Replay code for your region to access it:

USA (both revisions)	Europe (revision 0 only)	Japan (revision 0 only)	Korea
5217C700 E3500000 0217C6FC EAFC22FF 02085300 E3A00301 02085304 E2800C01 02085308 E1D003B0 0208530C E2000004 02085310 E3500000 02085314 03A09006 02085318 E3A00000 0208531C EA03DCF7 D2000000 00000000 5217CA20 E3500000 0217CA1C EAFC2237 02085300 E3A00301 02085304 E2800C01 02085308 E1D003B0 0208530C E2000004 02085310 E3500000 02085314 03A09006 02085318 E3A00000 0208531C EA03DDBF D2000000 00000000	52184440 E3500000 0218443C EAFC03AF 02085300 E3A00301 02085304 E2800C01 02085308 E1D003B0 0208530C E2000004 02085310 E3500000 02085314 03A09006 02085318 E3A00000 0208531C EA03FC47 D2000000 00000000	5217C6A0 E3500000 0217C69C EAFC2317 02085300 E3A00301 02085304 E2800C01 02085308 E1D003B0 0208530C E2000004 02085310 E3500000 02085314 03A09006 02085318 E3A00000 0208531C EA03DCDF D2000000 00000000 5217C674 E3500000 0217C670 EAFC2322 02085300 E3A00301 02085304 E2800C01 02085308 E1D003B0 0208530C E2000004 02085310 E3500000 02085314 03A09006 02085318 E3A00000 0208531C EA03DCD4 D2000000 00000000	52187A2C E3500000 02187A28 EAFBF634 02085300 E3A00301 02085304 E2800C01 02085308 E1D003B0 0208530C E2000004 02085310 E3500000 02085314 03A09006 02085318 E3A00000 0208531C EA0409C2 D2000000 00000000

In the main menu, select one of the options using the touch screen or using the D-Pad and press A once, then press Select.
"Touch to start!" or a text string with the same meaning for non-English languages will appear twice on the upper screen, then press either A, OK or the entry previously selected on the touch screen.
The main debug menu can be navigated using the D-Pad, as an entry can be selected by pressing Up/Down and the selected entry can be opened by pressing A.

If an entry leads to a submenu or a game mode, pressing B will reload the main debug menu (excluding some cases, see below).
Some entries crash the game because their content was removed from the ROM.

In the USA Kiosk Demo even trying to access the main debug menu crashes the game.

The main debug menu contains the following entries:

START

Restarts the game.

MultiBoot Parent

To do: Test DS Download Play capabilities.

Sends the multiplayer game to clients using DS Download Play, the MultiBoot Client entry or both.
It works and the player that used this will have "WID:0" in the lower right corner of the bottom screen after successfully connecting with other clients and it will be sent back to the main debug menu.

MultiBoot Client

Briefly displays "Press Button A to start" and "Now working" sequentially on the touch screen, then searches for parents.
This presence of this option is odd since multiplayer can normally only be accessed through DS Download Play.
Surprisingly it works perfectly (except for one issue, see below), and lets you play a multiplayer game through multi-card play by selecting Board Entrance or Minigame after being sent back to the main debug menu.

• 

  Press Button A to start

• 

  Now working

A major benefit to playing multiplayer this way as opposed to Download Play is how load times are dramatically cut down from literal minutes to just about a second due to no longer needing to send as much data between the parent and clients.
However there's one big, save-ruining glitch with this mode: the parent player's unlocked boards, records, minigames (including Triangle Twisters), and minigame modes are saved across ALL players save data, which can be a VERY nasty side-effect if it happens to be playing off of a new save.
This feature was probably not implemented in the actual game because the developers weren't able or didn't want to fix this issue.

Board Entrance

Goes to the Party Mode menu.
Unlike Extra Draw & Catch and Extra Color Territory, exiting from the Party Mode menu accessed in this way will lead to the game's final main menu, not back to the debug menu.

Extra Draw & Catch

To do: Test how it behaves using the MultiBoot (e.g. if it allows to control the two AI-controlled characters by a human player).

Starts a game of Pen Pals, known in Japanese as Draw and Catch.
Without using the MultiBoot the first AND second player are controlled simultaneously, but the in-game camera follows only the first, and the other two characters are AI-controlled.

This entry assigns characters to the players using the settings for the Minigame entry:

• The first human-controlled character uses Player 0's character only.
• The second human-controlled character uses Player 1's character (without MultiBoot also reads the COM difficulty, but the player is forced to be controlled by a human).
• The first and second AI-controlled characters use, respectively, Player 2's and Player 3's character and COM difficulty.

Every other setting including the play order is overridden and, if players from the same team use the same character, glitch text is shown instead of their team names.
The selected Minigame Set for this mode is All.

Extra Color Territory

Starts a game of Desert Duel, known in Japanese as Color Territory.
Again, without using the MultiBoot, both the first and second player are controlled simultaneously.

Like Extra Draw & Catch, this entry assigns characters to the players using the settings for the Minigame entry:

• The first human-controlled character uses Player 0's character only.
• The second human-controlled character uses Player 1's character only.

Also in this case, every other setting is overridden.
Again, the selected Minigame Set for this mode is All.

Minigame

Minigames List

This entry loads a menu for testing minigames and it can be navigated using the D-Pad, as a minigame can be selected using Up/Down and the current page can be changed using Left/Right.
The selected minigame can be started by pressing either Start or A.
To return to the main debug menu also Select can be pressed.

Time Attack (Boss Bash) mode can be enabled or disabled by pressing R and, if enabled on non-boss minigames, it affects only the button that must be pressed to exit from the minigame explanation screen (Y must be used instead of B).

Pressing Y displays four "result coin" values, one for each player, and they disappear when the button is released.
Each value refers to a specific player by its internal number and they change depending of the true type of the last minigame that was played and completed.

Known displayed values:

• 0 if a player was defeated in a Boss minigame, 1 if the player won.
• The rank of the players if it was a Battle minigame, from 0 (first) to 3 (last).
• All set to zero if it was a Score Scuffle minigame.
• Glitched values if it was a Puzzle minigame.
• The coins awarded to each player in any other case.

Without MultiBoot new records from Player 0 are saved even if its type is set to COM, but no Mario Party points are awarded.

Choosing a Puzzle minigame and exiting after starting the minigame will lead to the final Puzzle Mode menu rather than back to the debug menu.
Triangle Twisters can be unlocked in both Frenzy and Focus Mode by selecting its entry and starting a game, but this is not saved into SRAM.

• 

  Boss Bash mode enabled.

• 

  Result coin.

Settings

Minigame settings can be adjusted in a submenu by pressing X and pressing it again will return to the minigame list. These settings also affect Extra Draw & Catch and Extra Color Territory entries.

Customizable settings:

• The minigame type can be changed by pressing L or R and it can be cycled between 1 Player (Puzzle), 2 Players (Duel), ALL Players (4-Player), Decathlon (Score Scuffle mode, if the game is an actual Score Scuffle minigame it also cannot be paused) and Battle (enables Duel mode on Battle minigames). Setting the wrong type for a minigame and starting it will not crash the game.
• For each player the character (the same character can be chosen more than once), type (HUMAN or COM), difficulty level (applied only if the type is set to COM) and team (BLUE or RED, used to group players in 2-Vs.-2 or 1-Vs.-3 minigames) can be customized by selecting the corresponding entry with the D-Pad and using A or B to adjust it.
• The players' order can be shuffled by pressing Y (single players or teams, depending on the minigame type set).

Internally the players are numbered from 0 to 3.
For some reason the minigame type selector is a bit buggy because, on the explanation screen, the name, color and number of players of the chosen minigame type is updated only if the Duel type is selected or if the main debug menu is reloaded without resetting the game.
Without using the MultiBoot, every HUMAN character is controlled simultaneously by the player and setting every character as COM allows to see the game being played by Player 0 (its type resets back to HUMAN when exiting from the minigame) but it doesn't work for some minigames.
Toad is named by his Japanese name, KINOPIO.

Boss and Puzzle minigames use Player 0's character and type.
Playing Feed and Seed with Player 0's type set to COM reveals that the player that normally can only be controlled by a human has an unused and very basic AI programmed to play the minigame.
Interestingly, to advance the introductive text for Feed and Seed when using a COM character, A or the touch screen must be pressed physically.

All the others, including Puzzle minigames, simply force the character to be human-controlled.

(Source: WaluigiBSOD - Discovery of the unused AI)

Viewer

Crashes the game.

It's unknown what kind of in-game content was meant to be viewed using this menu.

Attakeda

Crashes the game.

The name refers to Atsushi Takeda, one of many people credited as "Program".

Hakamada

Crashes the game.

The name refers to Syun Hakamada, another person credited as "Program".

Hnishi

Begins a Party game on the desired map.
Exiting a Party game started on this menu will lead to the final main menu, not back to this entry, and the current progress is saved into SRAM.
For some reason it crashes in the American and Japanese versions.
Strangely it doesn't read the settings for the Minigame entry but without MultiBoot it sets the first player as a human-controlled Mario and the other players as AI-controlled "Normal" Daisy, Luigi and Wario.

There's an option called Boardmap Debug, probably for a debug map, but there isn't any reference to it in the file system, so it crashes when trying to load it.
Also, the Tutorial entry displays the tutorial instructions, but can't be played.

The name probably refers to Hideki Nishimoto, credited as "Program Director", or Syuuichiro Nishio, credited as "Planning".

Miyawaki

Crashes the game.

The name refers to Hidenori Miyawaki, again one of many people credited as "Program".

Takasima

Crashes the game.

The name may refer to Tetsuharu Takashima, one of many people credited once again as "Program", or to Suguru Takashima, credited as "Planning".

GUI Menu

Crashes the game.

Probably this entry was used to test in-game menus.
Another instance of the internal use of the word GUI is in the name of the dependencies for the boards' minimaps, as they're named "mbgui_dep_LZ.bin".

Message

Crashes the game.

Probably it was used to test in-game messages like previous Mario Party games developed by Hudson Soft (e.g. Mario Party 8).

Build Date

The debug menu features a build date which differs between versions.
It can be found in the ARM9 binary along with the other debug menu text.

For the sake of consistency, Revision 1 denotes the revised version of the game for the corresponding region and, when using Revision 0, the first version released in the corresponding region is intended instead.

Version	Text
USA Revision 0	Sep 14 2007 17:40:25
Japan Revision 0	Sep 29 2007 21:25:51
Europe Revision 0	Oct 5 2007 10:21:51
USA Kiosk Demo	Oct 9 2007 18:48:22
Japan Revision 1	Nov 28 2007 09:29:56
USA Revision 1	Nov 28 2007 11:17:34
Europe Revision 1	Dec 11 2007 14:34:28
Korea	Mar 21 2008 19:02:16

Unused Graphics

Boo Mugshot

In data\cfi_data_LZ.bin and data\cfi_128k_data_LZ.bin, among the graphics for dialogue box mugshots, an unused image of a Boo can be found. While a Boo has been playable in previous Mario Party games, the fact that only a dialogue graphic exists suggests they were meant to be an NPC instead. In the final game, Boos only appear in two minigames, Boo Tag and Peek-a-Boo, and as a collectible figure.

(Discovery: Xgone)

Hidden Objects

Music Box Speaker

The music box from "Call of the Goomba" has a speaker that can't be seen during the minigame.

Test Songs

In the ROM's main SDAT archive (MPDS_sound.sdat) there are three distinct unused songs that are duplicated many times under various names.
All of them have "MPDS_BGM" set as their Wave Container (in this case instrument sample collection), the one that is also used for the background music of the game.

Probably they were used to test various aspects of the game's sound engine.

Each unused song, excluding duplicates, can be identified by a distinctive Sound Bank (instrument set) name, so below they are listed and analyzed into a sub-section named after it.

BNK_DUMMY

Many copies of a simple four note test song can be found in the data for in-game jingles.

It can be found under the name of:

• JN302
• JN303
• JN305
• JN406
• JN407
• JN408
• JN409
• JN410
• JN504
• JN505
• JN601
• JN602
• JN603
• JN604

BNK_DUMMY2

Placed among used songs related to the boards, many duplicates of another unused song can be found:

• MU003
• MU004
• MU111
• MU112
• MU113
• MU201
• MU202
• MU203
• MU301
• MU304
• MU305
• MU401
• MU409
• MU410
• MU501
• MU502
• MU504
• MU509
• MU512

Another batch of duplicates of it can be found after the minigame music:

• MU701
• MU702
• MU703
• MU704
• MU705
• MU706
• MU801
• MU802
• MU803
• MU804
• MU805
• MU806
• MU807
• MU902
• MU904
• MU905

It resembles the beginning of the background music heard in underground levels in the SNES version of Super Mario Bros..

The song itself is prerecorded in a sound sample, as the corresponding SSEQ file consists in only a single note playing it.

Interestingly the same Super Mario Bros.-esque reference is also made by the songs used in the minigame Boogie Beam.

BNK_MMDUMMY

An unused song that is completely different from the other two can be found three times consecutively in the ROM, before the music used for the minigame results screen:

• MU614
• MU615
• MU616

The song itself is made by repeating many times 2 prerecorded samples, then altering one of them at the end.

Regional Differences

Due to South Korea banning gambling and its elements in video games, there are a number of changes made to the Korean version of the game.

• Bowser's Pinball Machine's three-slot jackpot game has been simplified into a game where the player has to hit the UFO when it lands on the center (and when it lands earlier, the player gets more coins). The coin roulette game also has been changed into a Whack-a-Mole game where hitting Bowser or Bowser Jr. gains coins, and hitting a Bob-omb loses coins. Both changes are reflected in the Story Mode cutscene.
• Two minigames, "Shuffleboard Showdown" and "Chips and Dips", were removed.