The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
Developer: Flagship/Capcom Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Game Boy Color Released in JP: February 27, 2001 Released in US: May 14, 2001 Released in EU: October 5, 2001 This game has unused areas. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused items. This game has unused music. This game has a notes page This game has a prerelease article

Items

There are two items within the game that the player can't obtain during normal game play. By changing memory addresses C682 (A button) or C683 (B button) to the following values, these items can be obtained.

• 02: Pressing the assigned button punches. This has no picture in the HUD or inventory, and has no description. There are points in normal game play where you can punch, such as when you're fighting Blaino, or if you acquire a Ring power-up that lets you punch, if no items are held. None of those situations seem to map this item to the A or B buttons. What makes this item interesting is the ability to "equip" punching to the A and B buttons.
• 0A: Long Hook (or L-2 Switch Hook), an item that can't be found in Oracle of Seasons, and is only found in its sister game, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. Even though this item can be mapped to either the A or B buttons, it won't do anything when pressed. Only by changing memory addresses D202 and D203 to 0A and 01 respectively can partial coding for the item be seen. Link goes through a similar animation of launching the Switch Hook as he did in Oracle of Ages but no Switch Hook actually launches from Link. The inventory screen has no description for this item.

An interesting fact to note is that there are some unused values in Oracle of Seasons that correspond to values used in Oracle of Ages. These values are 04, 0F and 11. Respectively in Oracle of Ages, these items are the Cane of Somaria, the Seed Shooter, and the Harp of Ages. Likewise, Oracle of Ages has item values that it doesn't use and Oracle of Seasons does use. In Oracle of Seasons, these unused items appear to be glitched up and don't work when mapped to the A or B buttons. Even when the game is forced to use these items, through hacking, they behave nothing like they do in Oracle of Ages.

Unused Rooms

By using a program called ZOLE, one can find some unused rooms within the game. There is no way to access these rooms through normal gameplay, and the game must be hacked in order to reach them. These will be organized from their current map group and map number from ZOLE.

File:OoS-StuckShop.png

Subrosia 8C: This thin room has two staircases and a doorway exit. Taking either staircase will send you to Impa's Refuge on the overworld map. The doorway leads to the top of Syrup's Potion Shop, where you'll become stuck behind the counter.

Subrosia 8D: This room has three staircases and a doorway exit. As before, all staircases take you to Impa's Refuge. Using the doorway will take you to the northeastern house in Sunken City (3F on map). The chest in the room has one rupee. Due to their similarities and placement within the game itself, it is likely that 8C and 8D were going to be connected by the staircases.

File:OoS-OldManRoom.png

Subrosia 9A: This room has an old man in it. The pot in the left corner is sitting atop a switch. When the pot is lifted or broken, the "secret revealed" sound is played, but nothing actually appears to happen; the switch is already pressed. The old man in the room gives you some money when you talk to him, and says what all the other old men in the game say when they give you money. The stairs actually lead to a place in Tarm Ruins (02 on the overworld map). If you leave the room and go back down the stairs, it will take you to the standard old man room, so perhaps this could be an earlier version of the rooms the old men had. Subrosia 9A is probably the most functional unused room out of all of the rooms listed here.

Subrosia AE: A strange room with no way out. The chest in the middle contains one rupee. This and the following rooms might indicate that an older version of their tilemaps were in use at the time of map creation.

Unmapped(2) C6: A weird room with tiles that are all over the place and not standard for caves. The stairs lead to Impa's Refuge on the overworld.

Unmapped(2) CD: A room with a chest and green lava, which is most likely a palette error. The chest has one rupee in it, and the stairs lead to Impa's Refuge on the overworld.

Overworld Placeholder Screens

Accessing some screens in a season you couldn't normally reach them (for example, Goron Mountain in any season but Winter) leads you to these filler screens in their respective seasons. Depending on the screen the base ground is actually different, as opposed to just grass tiles (so Onox' Tower has rock instead of grass, for example). Sprites are shared by all four variations in most cases.

• 

  Spring (Haru)

• 

  Summer (Natsu)

• 

  Autumn (Aki)

Music

Track 06

This track is not heard in normal gameplay.

Track 35

This track is not heard in normal gameplay.

Unused Sprites

Link Sprites

Poking around memory address D00B and typing in the following values, some unused Link sprites have been discovered.

• 28 through 2B, 54 through 57, and F4 through FF: Sprites of Link swimming with the Mermaid Suit. You can only get the Mermaid Suit in Oracle of Ages, so there is no use for these sprites.
• E0 to E3: Link playing the Harp of Ages. You obviously can't get the Harp of Ages in this game, so these go unused as well.

Other Sprites

• File:Farore Right.png Farore does appear in the game inside the Maku Tree. She sits behind a counter and only faces forward. There are other sprites of her, however, where she faces left,right and backwards that are not used.

Background Tiles

• File:Background Portal.pngThis tile is used in the game as part of the background while in Holodrum. However, the sprite of the blue portal linking Holodrum to Subrosia sits on top of this tile so this tile is never seen in game.
• File:Unused Statue.pngA statue tile. It gets loaded with cave tilesets.

Unused Characters

The US version of the game has the unused characters above. Just to note, there were many round black circles with the x's on them in along with these characters. It is limited to just a few in the picture but there were many more of those from where these characters were grabbed. These characters were obtained using the program yy-chr