Talk:EarthBound

Ambitious Ideas

Ambitious idea: Find a real way to activate the debug mode without abusing boxes late in the game.

Ambitious idea 2: Get it in the Japanese version and translate the options from there. -- Xkeeper (talk) 19:51, 31 August 2010 (EDT)

You can access the in-game debug menu using the boot-up debug menu. --SGR 19:54, 31 August 2010 (EDT)

So how many people do we have here that know Japanese well enough to do such a thing? -- Rick 22:30, 31 August 2010 (EDT)

• Regarding that unused music track, it's apparently a remixed version of a song from the original Mother, and goes similarly unused in the GBA port Mother 1+2. Source is EarthBound Central. --Ninetales 21:42, 18 September 2010 (EDT)

Unfinished Soundtrack Samples

Take a look at this recent article at EarthBound Central. Basically, Starmen.Net member BlueStone discovered that there are unfinished samples of final music buried in the game, and there are seven that you can listen to over there. LinkTheLefty 13:19, 3 September 2012 (EDT)

Unused Flag

Chpexo recently uploaded an animated version of this. Does the flag actually bounce up and down like that? It looks dumb. --BMF54123 20:02, 1 June 2013 (EDT)

Yes it does, the uploader before actually made a mistake. Sprites in the game do at times that "dumb" bouncing. --Chpexo 20:16, 1 June 2013 (EDT)

Spawn Rate Up Weirdness

Previously "Spawn Rate Up + Freed Threed = Game Crash"

So, I've been playing through EarthBound again for the first time in years. Just for fun, I decided to enable the anti-piracy "overkill spawn rate" code. Everything worked beautifully and I'm grossly overpowered. However, after I defeated the third Your Sanctuary boss and headed back to Threed, my game crashed! What's even stranger is that it crashed coming from the tunnel from Saturn Valley into Threed as well as crashing in Threed proper, but absolutely nowhere else! I decided to experiment a little and turn on the code while in the tunnel and while in Threed. The game crashed shortly after I moved.

At a guess, freed Threed simply has no enemy table whatsoever, so it crashes when it fails to load a proper enemy. But why Threed? And why don't Spiteful Crows or Coil Snakes spawn there in lieu of anything else, much like in freed Twoson and other places? Very odd... ~ Doc Lithius (Info|Chat|Edits) 11:40, 6 August 2013 (EDT)

That doesn't sound right. Loads of people played with the higher enemy spawn rate code all the way through until the end of the game, without such a problem. {Espyo^T} 08:27, 7 August 2013 (EDT)

The reason it crashes in Threed is because an enormous army of fake Zap Eels are swarming the graveyard. Upon contact they crash the game. I had a picture of it but I lost it. :( -Free Account (talk) 13:36, 17 August 2015 (EDT)

I'm back and I have an update... but rather than clutter up the talk page with more nonsense, I'll keep it brief:

Using the code in certain areas (Threed, Threed zombie tunnels, Dusty Dunes gold mine) does indeed seem to crash the game, but on top of that, it can also spawn a lot of very unexpected things. Struttin' Evil Mushrooms (the green ones) and Black Antoids seem the most common, but I've also ended up getting obvious garbage data enemies such as Ness, who gave more experience than any player can hold and a Backstage pass... Paula, who was stuck in her climbing pose... and even the Milky Well geyser, Shattered Men, or a fast food girl!

Trying to initiate a normal battle with any of them -- even the "normal" enemies -- them will cause a "boss encounter" effect to fire, followed by a random game crash (inappropriate music playing, bright green screen, whatever), but you can still one-shot some enemies if you're powerful enough (or using the right patch codes). So... yeah. Weird stuff, that.

~ Doc Lithius (Info|Chat|Edits) 06:11, 22 April 2017 (EDT)

I got back into looking at the EB anti-piracy recently. I started a playthrough with a hacked ROM (see the instructions in the C08391 section, except I did not change address A138 from 00 to 70). The game's save file is 32 KB in size. I also got to the Threed tunnel, and the game crashes there every time. Interestingly, it crashes even if I edit a save state to change RAM address 7EB539 to 00.

--Aquastrange (talk) 04:59, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Wii U Virtual Console

So it wasn't censored at all? What is Japanese version like? --Hiccup (talk) 12:19, 8 January 2014 (EST)

There's at least one known instance of altered text in the Japanese version, for unknown reasons. LinkTheLefty (talk) 13:38, 8 January 2014 (EST)

New Secret Discovered?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZpJBl33zDA --ComJay (talk) 23:25, 25 April 2016 (EDT)

Interesting. To me, it looks like it was a feature used to test out the scaling that the programmer forgot to remove. --Cheddarandchocolate (talk) 22:43, 30 July 2016 (EDT)

Unused Battle Backgrounds

There seems to be a few battle backgrounds that use graphics from the overworld such as Onett and Summers. Does anyone remember the backgrounds being used in the game at all? --Cheddarandchocolate (talk) 22:32, 30 July 2016 (EDT)

• For what it's worth, the Summers backgrounds are actually used in the game. You remember how there's that trippy effect when you eat the magic cake that makes Ness have the dream about Poo's training, right? Those Summers backgrounds are used in that sequence. Fireball3k (talk)

Unused Strange Sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFaPWOA4ex0 A strange sound effect that goes unused... Can it be added to the page? --DigitalDiamal99 (talk) 18:00, 7 December 2016 (EST)

There's also this sound effect. I'd like to add this, though I don't a rip of the game's sound effects, making this rather tough. --From: divingkataetheweirdo (talk) 02:17, 13 July 2017 (EDT)

$C08391

I have been looking into the "Layer Four" copy protection/SRAM checking to see if it would be a good way to tell if the anti-piracy methods were present in the Virtual Console release, but I am not sure it will help there.

Unlike the other SRAM checking routine at $C0A11C, this one writes three different values to $307FF0, $317FF0, and $327FF0. That other routine only writes to and checks $307FF0 and $317FF0.

The subroutine at $C08391 is called at six points in the ROM (not necessarily "during the game"), in routines at the following addresses. Interestingly, they are all toward the end of the ROM, sandwiched between functions generally relating to the boot-up debug menu.

• $EFE771
• $EFE873
• $EFE895
• $EFE8C7
• $EFEA23
• $EFEA4A

To simulate working on a cartridge copier and avoiding the other known routines, one can take the following steps hex editing a clean dump of the ROM:

• Change address A12D from F0 to 80. This disables the anti-piracy screen on boot.

• Change address A138 from 00 to 70. $C30100 is the routine that brings up the anti-piracy screen. Since it has been disabled, we can change the 00 in the last byte to 70 so that the checksums of the subroutine at $C0A11C now pass.

• Change address FFD8 from 03 to 05. This header byte indicates the SRAM size in kilobytes by powers of two. 256 Kb (i.e., 32 KB) would have been the maximum SRAM chip size and is commonly found in SNES cartridge copiers.

--Aquastrange (talk) 01:37, 24 June 2019 (EDT)

Edited the information above as I had quite a few things wrong originally, but wanted to share what I have found so far.

--Aquastrange (talk) 10:49, 25 June 2019 (EDT)

Unused X Sprite

in MOTHER 2, there is an unused sprite of an X, in Earthbound, it was replaced with Ness's mom sitting, though it is still unused. --Guscraft808Beta2 (talk) 18:49, 28 April 2020 (UTC)