Proto:Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PlayStation)

This page details one or more prototype versions of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PlayStation).

To do: Compare audio and 3D models, give the spritesheets a closer look, and rip the menu SFX. Also, maybe document other, smaller changes - Hidden Palace has a very long but by no means exhaustive list.

It's your favorite platformer tearjerker, now with bugs!

Dumped in early 2021, this prototype of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile was built a few months before the initial retail release. The exact date is unclear: the CD is marked as October 15, Hidden Palace claims it's July 17, and the debug menu is dated August 18. Regardless of the build date, it is quite late in development: most of the levels visions are already well-formed and almost all bosses are programmed in - only Nahatomb hasn't been fully implemented yet. All prerendered sprites and FMVs are also included, with the exception of the intro (understandable, considering it's just a remix of snippets of the other FMVs set to music). Soundwork seems to be the last thing that was produced, as there's a lot of voice snippet repetition in this build and most sound effects are nowhere to be found. The opening also lacks the title card.

Despite most of the work having been done, this is by no means a beta - the game is very unstable and will crash whenever it feels like it. Many of the levels are unfinishable due to game-breaking bugs.

General Differences

• While most of the script has been written, the final cutscenes are missing entirely, with the one directly preceding the Nahatomb boss fight being a rough draft. Most cutscenes are very unpolished.
• The level layouts are very close to the final, but some object locations are different. The camerawork is also unfinished, with many indecent shots showing too much of the levels' boundaries.
• The last room of the Extra Vision is about 66% done, and the cutscene that follows has nothing but the ambient programmed in.
• Pausing is yet to be implemented, though the pause menu sprites are present.
• Losing all lives yields a Game Over screen, as opposed to the final's Vision Over.
• Many songs are either rough drafts (such as the level complete fanfare) or missing altogether (such as the Extra Vision BGM, which reuses Tower of Balue in the final). Many of the more complete ones also have unfinished/unpolished instrumentation. Most SFX and a lot of the voiced lines are also nowhere to be found, as previously mentioned.
• Collision detection with both objects and terrain is sometimes wonky, with some platforms suffering from teleport if you jump at their edge.
• Debug counters of unknown purpose are displayed onscreen during most boss fights and some cutscenes.
• There are remnants of a scrapped mechanic in which Klonoa would be able to place an enemy on an air current to act as a platform. If you toss an enemy downwards and then press L1 right after, the enemy will freeze in place and Klonoa will be able to walk on it for a few seconds. Jumping from its head tosses it downward. Taking damage while jumping and holding an enemy also leaves the inflated enemy frozen in place. The same happens when jumping with a very precise timing at an air current.
• Despite the Now Loading text existing in the sprites, the loading screens are blank.
• Imprisoned Phantomilians could originally be hidden, just like the eggs. In fact, the hidden egg by the entrance of a cave near the end of 1-2 used to be a hidden Phantomilian, while the final bubble in the level used to be a (very well-)hidden egg holding an extra life.
• The savegame title is set to "~the door to", implying that at one point in development the subtitle started with "the".

Demo Endscreen

Proto	Demo

When losing all lives, a glitched screen fades in for 20 seconds and a voice clip in Japanese not heard anywhere else plays once. The clip itself is just Klonoa saying "see you on release day" ("発売日にまた会おうね"). While this seems to be left over from the demo's endscreen, this is most likely a draft instead of a leftover, since this build clearly predates the demo (which has full SFX, fully polished music and voicing, and no glaring bugs).

Baladium's Scrapped Second Phase

Ever felt that the Baladium fight was too short? Anticlimactic, even? Someone at Namco probably thought that too, as Baladium has a fully-programmed second phase in this build. Why it was scrapped is an absolute mystery, since it doesn't seem to be buggy at all. Along with the assets for the fight are colored cube models, most likely as placeholders for other objects such as the swinging platform. In the final version of the game all of these assets still have entries in the data, but are empty. Likewise the Gelg Bolm boss has 7 empty assets.

Debug Tools

To do: Investigate what each debug option actually does

Press L1 + R1 on the title screen to enter the main debug menu. They are the same as the ones present in the final version, except the Takmenu/Menu Program actually works... sort of.

Most of these options seem to do nothing. Movie 53 plays the FMV of Cress' summoning and Movie 71 plays the credits. Option opens another menu, Taka Option.

These sure are options programmed in by a Taka. What any of these do is completely unknown. To exit this menu, press Select.

To Game?

The behavior of a few of the nonexistent visions is different: 7-1 takes you to a partially-rendered Breezegale with no skybox and very little collision, in what seems to be a mockup of the final cutscene in which Klonoa and Huepow watch the sunset. Curiously, the crest on the dashboard is Cress' instead of Breezegale's.

Visions 8-2 through 9-3 crash the game due to the there not being any corresponding level data in the game files.

In-Game Menu

Holding R1 during the game brings up this handy debug menu. Some keys can be pressed while R1 is held to change options: Triangle and X act as CD volume up and down respectively, Circle changes the BGM to a different song that changes depending on the vision you're in, L2 toggles REV (effect unknown) and R2 cycles the preset number from 0001 to 0009 - 0007 and 0008 set one or two other unlabeled values to 7F; the effect of any of the presets is unknown.

Being this a debug build, there are also dev cheats enabled. L1 is a moonjump and holding Circle makes Klonoa faster than Sonic. You can also press Start + Select to soft-reset the game.

Visual Differences

There's a lot - hundreds, in fact. Most of them are very minor, like color changes and very minor retouches, so only the most interesting changes will be listed here.

Menus

Proto	Final

Like the rest of the game, the menus are lacking a hand of varnish. The monaural icon has been changed from a singing Moo to a trumpeting Moo on the final game, to match the trumpet SFX that substituted the prototype's canned "wahoo". The controller drawing also inexplicably got a small line next to the Circle button.

The save slots also changed, with the prototype having pulsating backgrounds and the final version having shifting borders.

Crest of Coronia

Proto	Final

The crest of Coronia used to have its dot placed lower, at about the 5 o'clock position as opposed to the final's 2½.

Interestingly, the big double door in the center of the temple appears to be the only instance of the updated crest in the prototype on first glance, but upon closer inspection one can clearly see that the texture of the right half of the door has been mapped wrong. Since it looks kind of right, this has not been fixed on the final game.

Intended	Used

Ghadius' Eye

Proto	Final

Ghadius' iris was more shadowed in the prototype, while the final has it looking more menacing. His normal eye color also changes from a bloodshot red to a dark brown... only to change back to red when he's about to die.

Grandpa's House

Proto	Final

In the final release, what is seen outside Grandpa's window is actually a skybox, giving it a subtle parallax effect when the camera pans. In the prototype, the panes are tinted blue. Many other elements of the house were polished as well.

Crate

Proto	Final

The mark on the breakable crates used to be a blue circle instead of the final's white overkill.

Vines

Proto	Final

Forlock's decorative vines were more bountiful in the prototype.

Ghadius Galaxy Texture

Proto	Final

This galaxy texture used in the Ghadius boss fight used to be much bigger.

Final Vision Save Background

Proto	Final

The outline used on the background of saves on the Final Vision was not Nahatomb's, but Ghadius'. Alongside the very unfinished state of everything concerning Nahatomb's boss fight in comparison to the rest of the game, this suggests that he was a late addition and the original plan was to have Ghadius as the final boss.

Font

Proto	Final

The main font was thoroughly refined and re-aliased for the final.

Higher-Quality Graphics

Prototype	Final

Bizarrely, some textures used in Balue's tower got shrunk in the final release. A similar thing happened to this cloud texture. (Both textures are used in many different palettes; these are just a sample.)

Proto	Final

These decorative fruit used in Forlock lost a lot of brightness in the final.

Other Changes

Level Crashes

Multiple levels have glitches where the level will crash. The earliest example is the third section of Vision 1-1. Due to invalid data offsets for the waterfall animation the game ends up modifying unrelated data in memory thus causing it to crash.

Karal in Vision 3-1

Among the assets for the first cutscene in Vision 3-1 there is the model for Karal, most likely originally used as an extension to the previous cutscene.

Nahatomb

The boss fight against Nahatomb is missing all of its textures, thus causing the model to appear invisible. The models do all however exist and unlike the final game they are not compressed. Additional models are also present, some of which are duplicates of existing ones.

Unfinished Ending

The ending cutscenes are unfinished in the game and have the data stored incorrectly thus crashing the game. Parts of the scripts and text still exist, although they're in an early unfinished state. Most of the data included in the ending cutscene area is leftover content from Vision 1-1, including the camera paths, sprite movement paths, sprites, animations, the window model and more.

Unused Content

Text Cursor

Intended	Final

There is a sprite for a cursor to be used to write your name when starting a new game in the form of a magnifying glass, but it goes unused: the prototype has a copy of the selected character awkwardly pulsate on top of itself, and when selecting a character set or removing a character, the cursor goes invisible. The final game has a much better cursor that looks like a ouija board's planchette.

Orbs

These odd, crudely-drawn orbs are stored with the Baladium fight's assets. They might be a draft of his second phase.

Eye in the Clouds

An eye creepily staring down from the clouds. Found with the Ghadius fight's assets, which is fitting.

Crest of Cress

Unused	Proto	Final

One of the Cress spritesheets includes an earlier design of the dashboard crest. The crest later lost its perfectly round shape, but differently from Coronia's, this one isn't consistent - the final release of the game includes various instances of the crest of Cress in its round form.

Creature

This orb and this odd creature appear together among the very first sprites of Cress. It's even hard to make out what the creature is supposed to look like. They both go unused.

Doll

This slightly creepy prerendered doll appears from various angles in this spritesheet. Its intended purpose is entirely unknown.

Blob

To do: Check if this blob actually appears in the prototype's Nahatomb fight. They do not exist in the final game.

These frames of a weird blob appear in the end of the game's files.