Secret Scout in the Temple of Demise

Secret Scout in the Temple of Demise
Developer: Color Dreams Publisher: Color Dreams Platform: Unlicensed NES Released in US: 1991 This game has unused graphics. This game has a hidden level select. This game has a development article

Free the Temple of Demise from Dr. Demise and his band of scum-sucking cohorts, using the most ridiculous kick in the history of video games! (Blame the ending for the adjectives used to describe Dr. Demise's gang.)

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Development Info

Unused Sprite Graphics

Every single CHR bank (even the title screen!) of this game has its own graphics and design for the shield item, but since the places where these graphics are loaded generally don't have a shield to be picked up, most of these go unused. These are all the shield designs there are.

This frame for The Treadster taking damage (named MONG6 in the game's source code) isn't used. Instead, the game calls for the stomping sprite when this enemy is damaged. The reason why is because this sprite is of a different size than the others, and this enemy summons as many sprites as available in his attack. As explained in KUNGTAB.ASM, this causes a bug making the enemy despawn, as he has to change sprite sizes, and for that the game needs to make a new sprite completely, but if there are no slots available, he will disappear.

Source-code commentary

;ENTITIES DISAPEAR WHILE ACTIVE FOR NO APPARENT REASON: ; ;1. IF YOU HAVE ENTITIES WHOS ANIMATIONS TAKE UP DIFFERENT NUMBERS OF ;SPRITES, ITS POSSIBLE THAT DURING THE SMOOTH ANIMATION CHANGE OF AN ;ACTIVE ENTITY A CONDITION COMES UP WHERE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH SPRITES ;TO BRING IN THE NEW ANIMATION. AVOID MAKING ANIMATIONS WHICH TAKE UP ;DIFFERENT AMOUNTS OF SPRITES IF YOU KNOW THAT THE WORLD WHERE THEY ARE ;GOING TO BE USED WILL HAVE FEW SPRITES AVAILABLE. FOR INSTANCE, IN ;CHALLENGE OF THE DRAGON THE MONGOLIAN GIANT WHO MAKES ROCKS COME CRASHING ;DOWN WOULD HAVE PROBLEMS IF HIS ANIMATIONS DIFFERED IN SIZE BECAUSE HE ;CREATES AS MANY ROCKS AS THERE ARE SPRITES AVAILABLE. THIS USED TO ;CAUSE HIM TO DISAPPEAR BECAUSE HIS HITTING ANIMATION WAS NOT AS WIDE AS ;HIS WALKING ANIMATION. THE HITTING MADE ALL SPRITES GET USED UP FOR ;ROCKS AND THEN HE COULDN'T BRING IN HIS WALK. THE SOLUTION WAS TO PAD HIS ;WALK OUT WITH BLANKS BUT IT MADE IT EASIER TO SWORD ATTACK HIM.

A tiny heart that appears in all graphic banks at BF. By its placement alongside other grabbable item graphics, it's assumed that it was used for the grabbable heart item at some point, or that it was meant as a frame on its animation.

Unused Background Graphics

To do: There are lots of unused small background pieces to identify and document.

Early HUD Graphics

These graphics found in the 7th graphical bank are early versions of the items in the final game, and they match most of the placement of the HUD elements in the 2nd bank, so it's likely these were for an early HUD. Roger Deforest, the game's developer, confirmed this, saying in his website that the graphics were originally all drawn by him, but before release, Nina Stanley, an artist at Color Dreams, cleaned up and redrew most of the graphics in the game. These items are the only remains of what the graphics used to look like before her graphical update.

Most of them match their final counterparts, but two differ: The brass knuckles, which are missing completely giving place for a bigger boomerang graphic, and the shield, which seems to be missing here and giving place to a cartoony piece of meat, matching its placement. It's to be noted that internally, shields are generally referred to as food, so this probably really is an early graphic for what eventually became the shield.

C1(A, C, D, E, G), C2(B, C, D, E, F), C3(A, B, C, D), C4(A, B, C, D), C5(A, B, C)

This big evil face can be found amongst the graphics of the town and its tunnels (not the windows' entrances, though; these use different graphics). All palettes seem to fit it well, but since one of the palettes that is loaded in these areas goes unused, it might have been intended for this.

D1(B, C, D), D2(A, B, C, D), P1(A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H), P2(A, B, C, D, E, F)

Another one of these! Found within the graphics of the ladder rooms, the red rooms full of platforms, and the rooms with pillars. This one, though, instead of looking like a spooky face, looks like a deformed dinosaur. All of these rooms have different palettes, and most leave at least some unused, which makes it not only very hard to guess in which room this was meant to used, but also with what palette. It doesn't look right in any of them, or with any of them.

Unused Item

This unused item (ID 5) can be spawned in the game, is affected by gravity, and gives Secret Scout a single dynamite stick when collected. Secret Scout normally can only get 10 dynamite sticks at a time, by picking up TNT boxes. (The dynamite thrown by Secret Scout also uses this graphic, but is a separate entity.)

Room Skip

To activate this cheat, during gameplay, hold Up + A on Controller 1 and Up on Controller 2 at the same time, then press B on Controller 1. Holding B and pressing Select on Controller 1 will now skip you to the room of the next ID. With this, you can also skip eventually to the map screen, which will display an empty title screen and freeze the game once quit.