T&C Surf Designs

T&C Surf Designs
Also known as: T&C Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage (boxart), T&C (title screen) Developer: Atlus Publisher: LJN Platform: NES Released in US: February 1988 This game has unused graphics. This game has a prerelease article

T&C Surf Designs is well-known for its decent skateboarding game, but also infamous for its completely awful and impossible-to-control surfing game.

Yin and yang.

Sub-Pages

Prerelease Info

Unused Graphics

To do: Unused/alternate versions of background tiles in both games' banks.

Selection

The tile arrangement in the PPU seems to suggest that the original titles of the two games were not as elaborate, and were simply "Skateboarding" and "Surfboarding" or "Surfing", respectfully. Also note the presence of the large "P" letter, which seems to indicate the 1P/2P prompts were larger at some point.

Normal Selection Menu	Mockup

Above is what the original game titles might have looked like, assuming graphics were not switched around.

Unused Big Wave Encounter Graphics

The sprite PPU bank for Kool Kat/Surf Cat is a later revision, just copied over from Thrilla's sprite PPU bank wholesale, with many graphics used in the menus completely blacked out. Some unused graphics still surface.

The left-facing arrow is unused, and was probably going to be used alongside the right-facing arrow on the Selection screen.

This replaces the left arrow in Surf Cat's sprite bank, but this heart object also seems to be unused in both the Surfing and Skateboarding game.

This ladder or pole object is loaded in Thrilla's sprite bank. Unknown what it was supposed to be used for.

Surf Cat's background PPU bank also contains many differences from Thrilla's background PPU bank, and in a turnabout, actually seems to be older than Thrilla's bank. It includes many older background elements.

Either Tiki Man and Joe Cool were to be playable in Big Wave Encounter, or Street Skate Session somehow used the same background PPU as Big Wave Encounter.

A "T". Unknown purpose.

The upper sprites are from the Surf Cat background PPU bank and are mostly unused. The lower sprites are from the Thrilla background PPU bank and are mostly used. Both sets occupy the same space in the PPU. Unknown what the "A" and "B" were to be used for, but they seem to be for some alternate, obsolete selection variant. There is no use for the ampersand in the final game, either. The Thrilla set contains a letter "P" identical to the one used in the sprite bank, but the 1P/2P selection graphics are always drawn using the sprite bank versions in the final game.

Unknown what these are supposed to be. Possibly an old remnant of an earlier selection screen?

Unused Street Skate Session Graphics

Street Skate Session seems to be the newer of the two games included, given the far more compact and less chaotic structure of the mode within its PPU sets (of which both characters share). There are still several unused graphics within the two banks.

The heart is unused here as well.

The "AB" from the Surf Cat BG data is also in the Skateboarding background PPU data.

These are all the sprite numbers that appear when you collect the coin items or stomp an obstacle/enemy. Numbers 4 and 8 are unused; 4 even seems to have been neglected, as its design is completely different and more crude than the other numbers (the 4 in the used background PPU numbers font looks more standardized).

Another letter P, this time intended for the Skateboarding HUD somehow. In the final game there is no 1P or 2P, just character icons.

There are no manholes on any skateboarding level in the final game.

Misc.

A sprite of Kool Kat/Surf Cat, identical to the used variant, is drawn in the Thrilla sprite PPU bank. This could have been used as a scratch pad or reference somehow.