Proto:Star Fox Adventures/Dinosaur Planet/Unused Areas & Maps

This is a sub-page of Proto:Star Fox Adventures/Dinosaur Planet.

To do: Add screenshots of these areas and comparisons with the playable versions of the maps where applicable.

Test Map

A test map internally named Animtest is present in the game. The map contains a few objects near the spawn point, many obstacles to test movement, and a (non-functional) zipline. To access this map, use one of the below GameShark codes and press D-Pad Up when in-game.

Fox	Krystal
815C5038 4508 815C503A 2000 815C503C C2BA 815C503E 0000 815C5040 C685 815C5042 0A00 D10A7DC0 0800 800B4A58 0001	815C5048 4508 815C504A 2000 815C504C C2BA 815C504E 0000 815C5050 C685 815C5052 0A00 D10A7DC0 0800 800B4A58 0001

(Source: Original TCRF research)

EarthWalker Temple

Although it's not accessible by default since the level's grid isn't placed anywhere in worldspace, the ROM contains the entirety of the EarthWalker Temple area first seen in early leaked press footage. This level used to be accessed from SwapStone Hollow and would have led to the original version of Walled City (a dangerous walled-off area packed with RedEye and surrounded by the Twilight Marsh) - but EarthWalker Temple and prototype Walled City were both scrapped and amalgamated into a single simplified area also named "Walled City" at some point between the recording of the leaked press footage and this build.

Its layout is similar to the Walled City levels playable in this game and in SFA, with a large central ziggurat and smaller temples in the northwest and southeast corners with sun/moon theming. The top of the central ziggurat has a functional warp point which brings Sabre to the Krazoa Test of Skill. There's an inaccessible warp pad chamber directly below it which was likely supposed to rise up out of the temple like in SFA's Walled City.

The upper room inside the temple is the story-relevant Communications Chamber. A less detailed copy of this map block can be found out-of-bounds in Warlock Mountain and is used during an incomplete cutscene where Krystal and Randorn recount how they arrived on Sauria.

The giant "Jungle Door" at the back of the level would have led to the original Walled City.

CloudRunner Fortress - Trap Rooms

This incomplete subarea of CloudRunner Fortress isn't directly accessible either since its level grid isn't placed in the game world. It seems to have been related to a scrapped sequence involving Kyte's traitorous uncle colluding with General Scales, as described in the storyboards hidden in the SFA prototype's leftover STORYBOARD.bin file. The boards appear to show that the Trap Rooms were accessed through the underwater passage in the Fortress' main courtyard, which leads to the speeder track in the final version. The March 1999 level list includes "CloudRunner - Treasure", "Dungeon", and "TrapRooms", but doesn't feature "CloudRunner - Race", so it's possible the trap rooms were replaced with the speeder racetrack. Curiously, Star Fox Adventures also has a scrapped area found beyond the Fortress' flooded courtyard pathway.

The unreferenced map blocks contain a model piece which belongs to this area and matches up perfectly with the surrounding blocks' geometry after unscrambling their grid positions. It uses a very similar colour palette and range of textures, and has a CloudRunner-themed lever for Kyte to pull.

A few of the game's unused CloudRunner Fortress objects may have been intended for this area.

Galleon Interior - Lower Decks

Krystal and Kyte can enter the galleon while it's docked at CloudRunner Fortress and spy on General Scales talking with some SharpClaw soldiers in the ship's lower decks. The lower deck area contains a number of other inaccessible rooms beyond the one seen in this cutscene as well as a corridor connecting them. The stairwell down to this corridor is located behind the back wall, next to the SharpClaw who chucks crates at Krystal.

The first room is supposed to display a few explosive barrels which Krystal may have originally been intended to retrieve based on a scrapped sequence described in the storyboard file. The barrels don't appear when visiting the room however, despite them being in the map's setup.

The second room has some unique wall textures (seen in the corner opposite the doorway here), but the wrong texture wrapping mode is set for them. The vertex colours for the room seem to be half-finished.

The back room is found beyond a solid door modelled into the end of the corridor. It's quite roughly drafted, lacking vertex shading and missing some faces.

Separate from the above map model, the game also contains an unused early version of the Galleon as an object model. To see this model during the Galleon intro, change the byte at address 380E82D to 12. It features earlier drafts of all the lower deck rooms, with simpler but more polished modelling and texturing. This ship has a floating steering wheel which is absent in the final N64 version but present in Star Fox Adventures' Galleon. The middle deck has gunports, which might suggest it was once intended to have cannons. The door to the second room in the lower deck is positioned further down the corridor here. Finally, the back room of the lower deck has a rear window which is very close to lining up with the ship's propellor (as seen during the intro if this model is swapped over the final Galleon model) - the propellor appears to have been intended to stick out through this hole, so the back room could potentially have been intended to resemble an engine room if it hadn't been scrapped before its later art pass was completed. Removing the dark vertex shading from the exterior face of the window reveals a hidden detail in its texture: a housing for the propellor shaft, or possibly a rear-facing cannon.

Rolling Demo

This area is used for the dummied-out title screen rolling demo that's intended to play after the game's intro logos, however there's a lot more to the map than what can be seen during that sequence. It has a large chunk of an early version of Diamond Bay with a significantly different layout closely resembling what's shown on an unused Diamond Bay map object.

Mid-2000 Promo	Rolling Demo	Playable

It also contains most of an earlier version of Discovery Falls. Much like the version seen in an early promotional screenshot, the water is much shallower and there's a large cuboid platform (seen in the left of frame here) near the platform Krystal can rock-climb up to. The cave behind the waterfall is also missing in the Rolling Demo, and the vertex colour shading differs a lot between it and the playable version.

The version of DarkIce Mines in this sequence is mostly the same, but the walls above the lava pit have an unusual green tint.

Ice Mountain Warp Pad Caves

There's a hidden Krazoa warp pad in the cave Tricky's held captive within at the start of the game, which can't usually be seen since there's no way to revisit Ice Mountain after completing the speeder race. It's unknown where it would've led since it doesn't appear to have a warp object associated with it. This warp pad is smaller than most in the game but its dimensions perfectly match the following two pads, which seems to suggest they were intended to be linked:

There's also a hidden cave near the hot spring at the end of Ice Mountain's speeder track which can't be accessed normally. Tricky was likely supposed to dig through the blocked tunnel leading inside but the digging setup seems to be unimplemented. Inside are two Krazoa warp pads, but there don't seem to be any warp objects configured for them.

There's unused dialogue in the ROM near the rest of Ice Mountain's text where the SharpClaw challenge Sabre to a speeder chase rematch plus a harder challenge, so one of these warp pads is probably there to provide a way for the player warp back to the top of Ice Mountain and replay the race. The second warp pad may relate to the harder challenge mentioned by the SharpClaw, as well as the second speeder track below.

Unused Speeder Track

Dinosaur Planet uses a unique loading system where each area's 3D model is divided up into a series of arbitrarily-tall 640×640 model pieces (referred to as "blocks" internally) arranged in a grid and loaded/unloaded seamlessly as the player explores the planet. Each level has a file defining which block models are used for each cell of its grid. Comparing these grid files with the list of map blocks reveals the ROM contains quite a few blocks which aren't referenced by any level. Although the grid position data for these blocks is missing it's still possible to reassemble many of them since they usually fit together in a logical jigsaw-puzzle-like way. Among these unreferenced blocks is an unused icy mountain level that seems to be a speeder racetrack! It's unknown what actors/objects would've been used here as its setup file also hasn't been found.

The area can't be played currently, but here is a reconstruction of what it looked like:

It's possible that "Yeti Mountain" is the name of this area, based on the March 1999 level list.

Early Ice Mountain

Also included among the unreferenced level blocks is the entirety of an earlier art pass of Ice Mountain's speeder track. It appears to be the same one that was featured in some of the game's early promotional trailers. The differences in the layout of its blocks suggest it may have been implemented as a single map, whereas the final version of the level is seamlessly split into two overlapping maps. It's not currently possible to play this level for the same reason as the unused icy speeder level.

Early SwapStone Hollow

Warlock Mountain contains a small piece of an earlier design of SwapStone Hollow out-of-bounds near the orrery on Krystal's side. It's used during the cutscene where Randorn exposits about the planet's history, but not all of it is shown in that shot.

Early Krazoa Test Room

It's not positioned anywhere in the global map so it's tricky to visit, but the game contains a map with the internal name "Krazoa Shrine" which is slightly different from any of the other Krazoa test rooms. Differences include a hole in the ceiling above the entry warp, unique numerical Krazoa glyphs on the usually blank blocks along the corridor leading to the test room, smaller brickwork and skirting on the test room walls, and a flatter Krazoa portal design at the back of the room - which is actually modelled into a hole in the wall and extrudes a distance beyond it. The setup for this test has a lone SharpClaw standing inside the room, plus several columns. It seems to have the same features as the earlier shrine model seen in the leaked press footage, and is likely a shrine template created around that phase of development.