The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass/Map Data
This is a sub-page of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
Unlike its successor, Phantom Hourglass features a lot of unused maps and minimaps still present in the game's files. Interestingly, some of them seem to be region specific.
Contents
Removed Maps
The following maps are included in the Course List, but were removed from the final game.
| # | Course List ID | Developer ID | Translation | Identification | Notes | Used |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 38 | seatest | Sea Test | Sea Test | Removed | ✘ | |
| 39 | mtest2 | MapTest | Map Test | Removed | ✘ | |
| 3B | enemytest | Enemy Test | Enemy Test | Removed | ✘ | |
| 3C | eventtest | Event Test | Event Test | Removed | ✘ | |
| 3D | roomtest | RoomTest | Room Test | Removed | ✘ |
Unused Maps
 | player_dngn This is a leftover test map with several rooms. |
 | isle_first A very early version of what would become Mercay Island. |
 | MapObject Rooms A bunch of leftover early versions of rooms that are implemented as MapModels in the final game. |
Cutscene Maps
These maps are used for various special scenes in the game, such as the cinematic intro. Loading them without the proper setup puts the player into a barebones test map. The skybox and lighting reflects the intended cutscenes though.
demo_title
This map is used for the cinematic intro when the game is started up.
| Model | Minimap |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Manually loading this map results in the bottom screen getting mirrored on the top screen.
|
demo_end
This map is used for the ending cutscene. It has a unique minimap when loaded manually.
It features the skybox that can be seen in this cutscene in the final game.
| Model | Minimap |
|---|---|
 |
 |
demo_chase
This map is used for the cutscenes where Bellum escapes to the Ghost ship.
It has the same level geometry and minimap as demo_title. The lighting is dark, to reflect the cutscene. It features the skybox that is visible in the scene.
demo_op
This map is used for the Slideshow that recaps the story of Wind Waker and the cutscene at the beginning of the game. It has the same level geometry and minimap as demo_title.
Early Zauz's Island
 | To do: Add information about NPC/MapObjects from ZMB file. |
Found in "isle_ice". Featuring textures not seen elsewhere, the island most resembles the layout of Zauz's, with the boat pier placed on the south instead of west of the island. Similarly to the early Mercay Island, the model for the inside of the house isn't present, water is static, setup file is formatted differently, and the model itself is several times smaller than regular Phantom Hourglass maps.
| Early | Final |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Ice Dungeon Pre-Boss Room
The Ice Dungeon doesn't feature a pre-boss room found in all of the other dungeons in any versions of the game. The room file itself is missing in the Japanese release, but it is present in the EU release.
The entry for it in the dungeon's room table was removed, so you can't load it as-is. The apparent reason for this is that this room would've broken vertical consistency in the dungeon. You were to enter the pre-boss room from B1, moving upwards, which would mean this room should be on 1F (The room you're in when you first enter the dungeon).
While it is possible to just not assign a floor number to a room, that would've resulted in it not being included in the map screen that allows you to select which floor's minimap to view, which they may have wanted to avoid. In general, it's noticeable that the vertical layout of this dungeon underwent a number of changes, leaving the order of floors and the map numbering quite disjointed.
As for the actual room, it features a mini-puzzle where you have to use the grappling hook on the two torches to catapult yourself onto the elevated terrain.
 |
 |
Flooded Isle of Ruins Cave
Isle of Ruins has two versions: one with water raised, and one with the water lowered. The latter allows you to access a secret cave with treasure. This cave ALSO exists in the flooded version, however, and is clearly incomplete.
| Flooded | Unflooded |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Battle Maps
Phantom Hourglass features a multiplayer mode, where two players can play against each other. The final game features 7 Stages (plus the Tutorial level).
These maps are stored as .narc archives in the root of the filesystem in order to slim down the tethered multiplayer mode (DS Download Play), where a slimmed down ROM is sent to another DS. The main player selects the map to play, which is then sent to the other tethered player on-demand. These maps are also present in the normal Map directory though, and while the maps that correspond to the final stages are identical, there are two extra ones present!
battle08
This is an early version of the "How to Play" Tutorial level.
Contrary to the final version, this map is a lot more open, technically permitting Link to move around to various places. The game forces a linear path by use of event triggers though, going as far as essentially making the path as linear as the final version, just with a lot more annoying text triggers telling you to not go a certain way. The final version handles this a lot more sensibly by having areas you're not supposed to go to sealed off with walls in the first place. This early version does not yet feature the item bubbles you have in the final battle mode.
The text messages and events bound to triggers in the map are the same as the final version of the tutorial map (battle11), but no longer match up with the script completely, resulting in a slightly broken experience.
battle09
This level was probably scrapped very early on in development. It is rather barren, featuring only two player specific zones and a few ponds of water, as well as three sections that are raised above for no apparent reason.
| Model | Minimap |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Cut Dungeon (dngn_hidari/dngn_hou)
There are two maps only present in the European version of the game, "dngn_hidari" and "dngn_hou". They are both identical and contain a level that looks to be a very early version of a cut dungeon.
These maps are not present in the course list, and use the same early format as the "isle_first" map. They're also the only instance of a map not having an equivalent minimap generated in the Map2D folder. Even maps that were later removed entirely or had their geometry replaced with MapObjects still have a minimap, even if it's sometimes an earlier version. It is possible that this is just a side-effect of the presumably accidental inclusion of this map though.
The name suggests this dungeon would have been located on Bannan Island (named "isle_hidari" internally). This island doesn't play a major role in the final game, aside from a few sidequests and a minigame. The textures in the nsbtx file of the level mostly have unremarkable names, but two stand out: "seiiki", which means "Sanctuary", and "shinden", which means "Temple".
There is an interesting similarity in the general structure of the map to the final Temple of Courage. While this is *purely speculative*, it could be that the Temple of Courage was originally meant to be located on Bannan Island, which shares a connection in the final game to Molida Island through the adventurer that left Molida to go to both the Island of Wind, and later ends up on Bannan Island. It is obvious that this area of the game underwent some changes, so it would make sense as to why this map would be leftover.
This map features no loading zones of any kind. While there are cutouts in the floor where stairs would be, no map objects for them exist in the map's zmb file.
There are four Octorock enemies, a few pots, and two treasure chests. The treasure chests are set to the default value, meaning they are "empty".
Early Goron Minigame Room (dngn_goron)
This map is only present in the Korean and Japanese versions of the game. It's a barebones room that contains a number of breakable crystals that are used in the Goron Minigame on Dee-Ess island. From the map name, it can be deducted that this minigame was at one point meant to be located on Goron Island (as a cave), before it was moved.
Unused Minimaps
| To do: Add pictures and explanation about the unused zoomed in versions of the minimaps. |
Minimaps are automatically generated from a given model of a map. For every area that uses a MapObject for its entire geometry, the minimap present in the game's files reflects the original map geometry, which has been removed in most cases. (Exceptions above).
Due to the fact that in-game there are a lot of areas where instead of the minimap generated for the location, the respective overview minimap is shown (with a bubble indicating the player location), there are a lot of unused maps for house interiors, caves, etc.
The unused minimaps for those locations are usually very unremarkable, so they're omitted here, except a few noteworthy examples.
Additionally, there was a concept that was presumably scrapped early on (given that in the 2006 E3 versions this is no longer the case) where in addition to the overview maps of a given island, there'd be zoomed-in versions of the minimap depending on what subsection you were in. While the concept was scrapped, the zoomed-in, unused minimaps are still auto-generated from the final maps, so they're pretty unremarkable.
Prince of Red Lions
There are unused versions of ship interior minimaps for every ship, which are normally not visible.
The only noteworthy one is for the boat of the "Self-Proclaimed Hero", called "flink" internally.
| Ship Interior View | Minimap |
|---|---|
 |
 |
The other ones basically all look like this.
