Yoshi's Island DS

Yoshi's Island DS
Also known as: Yoshi's Island 2 Developer: Artoon Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo DS Released in JP: March 8, 2007 Released in US: November 13, 2006 Released in EU: December 1, 2006 Released in AU: November 23, 2006 Released in KR: November 8, 2007 This game has unused areas. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused items. This game has a hidden level select. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prototype article

Yoshi's Island DS is the direct sequel to Yoshi's Island. While the first game just had Baby Mario, this one features four other baby characters Yoshi can bring with him to enhance his abilities. Despite the cutesy appearance and mishmash of old and new artstyles, the game is still as unforgiving in difficulty as its predecessor.

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Prototype Info

Level Select

If the game tries to load a nonexistent .mpdz file, it will instead load an unused title screen, which also functions as a level select. Unfortunately, you aren't able to see your button inputs, so you'll have to count. The order goes 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc. until 1-E, at which point it goes to 2-1. Repeat until 5-E, at which point the last "level" on the list is the enemy museum.

Controls:

• A/B/Start - Enter the level specified.
• Right/Left - Cycle through the level to go to.
• Up/Down - Press Down to cycle (with Right/Left) through the subareas of the level you have selected; press Up to go back to choosing a level.
• Select - Cycle through the music that will be playing in the level.
• L/R - Cycle through the baby you will have in the level.
• X/Y - Unused?

You can use the following Action Replay code to replace the prologue level with the level select:

US	Europe	Japan	Korea
1210F97E 00000000	1210FA5E 00000000	1210F876 00000000	121111B7 00000000
US Rev. 1		Europe Rev. 1
1210FBFE 00000000		1210FCFE 00000000

Unused Levels

Levels are crsb/cscn files, which call upon the map data files (mpdz) and define things such as entrances/exits, the amount of areas in the level, and starting positions.

13w1009.mpdz and 14k5146.mpdz

These are the only two mpdz files in the game's data that are never called upon in any crsb file. They crash the game when attempting to be loaded. In the case of 14k5146.mpdz, it's revealed when opening the file up in a hex editor that it's barebones and has no level data defined.

Interestingly, both of these levels exist in the USA Kiosk Demo and can actually be loaded, revealing what they were:

• 13w1009 was a work-in-progress version of an Enemy Museum room.
• 14k5146 was a work-in-progress version of Gilbert the Gooey.

Unused Graphics

An early Press Start graphic, meant to be used for the unused title screen shown above.

Graphics for character coins of Baby Wario and Baby Bowser. In the final game, only character coins for the first three babies appear in regular gameplay.

These two egg-looking objects are present in the graphics for the first adult Bowser fight. For whatever reason, they lack a palette; the one used here is from another file.

Bowser was perhaps once meant to retreat inside of his shell; present in the graphics for the first adult Bowser fight. (As a side note, the sprites for adult Bowser were rotoscoped from Yoshi Topsy-Turvy, which Artoon also developed.)

An unused tileset meant for test rooms. Several test rooms present in the USA Kiosk Demo use it.

Unused (objtitle2.arcz)	Used (objtitle3_J.arz)

An early graphic for the Adventure Mode button on the main menu. Yoshi was touched up, as was Baby Mario.

Unused (objtitle2.arcz)	Used (objtitle3_J.arz)

An early graphic for the Time Trial Mode button on the main menu. Unlike the Adventure Mode graphic, this one is entirely different; it seems that the Time Trial mode was once planned to be something else. It reads "Mario Clear Mode".

Flashing Eggs

While the flashing eggs from the previous game make a cameo appearance in Secret 5, they cannot be obtained or thrown. However, if hacked into Yoshi's inventory, they're fully functional and still retain their original use (dropping a Red Coin if thrown at an enemy).

Gather six eggs, and use the following Action Replay code to change all of them into flashing eggs:

US	Europe	Japan	Korea
120ED9F8 00000003 120ED9FA 00000003 120ED9FC 00000003 120ED9FE 00000003 120EDA00 00000003 120EDA02 00000003	120EDAD8 00000003 120EDADA 00000003 120EDADC 00000003 120EDADE 00000003 120EDAE0 00000003 120EDAE2 00000003	120ED738 00000003 120ED73A 00000003 120ED73C 00000003 120ED73E 00000003 120ED740 00000003 120ED742 00000003	120EF038 00000003 120EF03A 00000003 120EF03C 00000003 120EF03E 00000003 120EF040 00000003 120EF042 00000003
USA Rev. 1		Europe Rev. 1
120EDC88 00000003 120EDC8A 00000003 120EDC8C 00000003 120EDC8E 00000003 120EDC90 00000003 120EDC92 00000003		120EDD88 00000003 120EDD8A 00000003 120EDD8C 00000003 120EDD8E 00000003 120EDD90 00000003 120EDD9A 00000003

Build Date

Present in stamp.rc are build dates, in YYMMDD format.

USA Kiosk Demo	USA	Europe	Europe Kiosk Demo
060916.2044	061009.0352	061009.0352	061101.1423
Japan	USA Rev. 1	Europe Rev. 1	Korea
061107.2027	061110.1620	061110.1620	070130.1859

Oddity

Two of the grassland level music tracks are in an sdat file called YOSHI_DS.sdat, but the rest of the soundtrack and all the sound effects are in sound_data.sdat.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused M Block Flags

To do: How can these be enabled?

Each M Block has at least 8 bytes of flag data that change its rendering and behavior. Some of these have options that are never used in game

• Byte 0 to 0x1: Spawn completely invisible, but show up upon hit similar to Hidden Blocks in Super Mario World
• Byte 1 to 0x3: Release a Red Coin upon hit, but the sound is broken
• Byte 2 to 0x1: Only turn gray upon hit, instead of losing the M and becoming more solid
• Byte 2 to 0x2: Infinite coin release

(Source: Zolarch)

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan	USA/Europe

Revisional Differences

To do: Higher quality rips of music. Where is extra fanfare used in jp/kr? USA Rev 1 and Europe Rev 1.)

Levels

USA/Europe	Japan/Korea

1-1 had a shrub moved in order to add an arrow on a pipe.

USA/Europe	Japan/Korea

Levels with rain were modified, possibly to make it more visible for the player.

USA/Europe	Japan/Korea

Level 2-4 had a gauntlet room altered - some vases and chairs were removed. In spite of it making the area easier, this might have been done to avoid lag issues. Also noticeable in the comparison are differences between the vase's palette - the chairs also have a small difference in their palette.

USA/Europe	Japan/Korea

Level 3-4 received a significant update. At one point, Yoshi must push a vase off a ledge to receive a key. In the Japanese and Korean versions, it was placed on a small pillar; because of this, the coins were moved.

USA/Europe	Japan/Korea

A healthy amount of graphical glitches were fixed between the versions.

Music

USA/Europe	Japan/Korea

The final boss music in the International version is incredibly short, and seems to be missing a second half. The Japanese and Korean versions fixed this by adding the rest of the song, along with modifying the French horns to be higher pitched.

The Japanese and Korean versions have an extra fanfare in the .sdat folder titled "J22". All other versions only go up to "J21".

Other

• The Japanese and Korean versions display small descriptions of what option is highlighted in the main menu.
• The Japanese and Korean versions had the order the minigames are presented in the menu altered.
• Some transition effects were altered between versions.