A title screen for Lemmings Versus in Sylvanian Families? Check. A word-for-word transcript of the manga's beginning along with alternate game rules in Death Note: The Kira Game? Double-check.

Now I've discovered not one, not two, but three completely unrelated title screens in Wan Wan Meitantei, plus reams of script that don't belong in the game. Fortunately, I've begun to put together the pieces as to what the hell I'm looking at.

First off, the title screen "Omoshiro Tantei" ("Funny Detectives"). This can be explained simply as an in-production title for the game (or possibly some minigame somewhere I haven't dug up), since the setting for the game is Omoshiro-cho ("Funnytown").

Second and third, in one fell swoop: the title screens "Kurukurupon!" and "Hamster Monogatari", plus the funny Playstation memory card messages and quite a bit of fantasy-themed script involving lots of characters with "hamu" in their names. Hamster Monogatari is a PS1 puzzle game (the full title is, after all, "Fantasy Puzzle Hamster Monogatari") spawning a fair number of sequels, mainly on - you guessed it - GBA. Seems there were canceled plans to port the original to GBA as a two-in-one with a certain Kurukurupon!.

So. Am I the only one who has this strange habit of finding bits of other games in his projects?

All I've ever found are unused graphics and parts of older, longer scripts that remain at the end of the normal script.

Oh, and a few leftover FF3 menu strings in FF4.

And the 8MB ROM is still almost half-empty. All things considered, I could probably fit an English script into the game even without my one-byte hacks...but I don't like making a half-assed job of things. Funnily enough, the scripts are compressed, but the graphics aren't.

Just for the hell of it, maybe I should look into the original Hamster Monogatari for PS1 sometime, especially if the tools (and table) I've made for Wan Wan Meitantei are as compatible with it as they are with the dummied script I've found. Something tells me it'd be a great place to get started with PS1 hacking...

Yume Penguin Monogatari had an ENTIRE scene chopped out. There's bits of script that reference some sort of plane race between Penta and the main villain in the game.

Sengoku Densyo... is odd. It has something that resembles a script in it. I say resembles because it seems to have unmapped characters in there. The only text in the game is in the intro and the ending... The original game has cutscenes, which were apparently removed in the port.

It's better to be lucky than to be good. It's always good to find fun filled facts about a game... it makes for interesting conversations of what ifs.

Link: http://www.pagetable.com/?p=28

SMB2J had some Unused Graphics for terrain in it's CHR: A Cactus and Alternate Floor/Ground graphics,

KyoroChan Land/Castelian (NES) has Leftovers of sourcecode in it. Both E, U and J ROMs had it left there.

And finally: Hebereke/Ufouria has Unused Graphics, Music (Track #4, Parellel Hebereke) and Inaccessable (Read: Code not found) Text and a Hex List for Debuggers

Translation of Hebereke's Unused Track (See Above) is translated from my ''Takusan Hebereke CD Sountrack''

Those screenshots only show the "virtual pet" aspect. There's two parts to the game: the Detective School and the Detective Agency, but you can't play the Detective Agency (the main game) until you've trained at least one partner via the Detective School.

Training consists of twelve "weeks" of classes for your chosen puppy partner. You can train the little guy (or girl) in four different stats (Movement, Observation, Reasoning and Analysis), though you can only train up to three different stats at once. After you've confirmed your puppy's courses for the week, you get treated to a cute little animation sequence where he/she goes through each activity, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing comically (it seems to be partly random, but higher stats seem to produce more successes, and successes give higher stat boosts). After that, your puppy takes a Practice Test (or, after a few weeks, you can choose the Exam) for one of the four skills: this is a brief minigame which, if you clear it, will give your puppy an extra stat boost in the chosen category (or a special skill like "Codebreaking"""; I have no idea yet what these are good for, though). These range from stuff like "count the fish" to "mash all the buttons" to a fairly unforgiving Concentration game to a race for your life from a giant watermelon (the command for this last one is simply "Run!"). Rinse and repeat eleven times more, and your puppy partner graduates (though if he/she's picked up more than 3 skills, you have to pick and choose which ones he/she keeps).

The main Detective Agency game is a bit like Phoenix Wright meets Clue: the town is set up like a game board, with the investigation divided into turns, and you're competing against three rival detectives to solve the case. Each location has a potential witness/suspect: you can ask questions, present evidence, or examine the surroundings. After a few actions, the turn ends, and you can move to a different location. Once you think you solved the case, you go back to the mayor's office and answer the mayor's questions (like the judge sequences in the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective games for Sega CD). If you answer all the questions correctly, then the case is solved; if not, then the mayor sends you back out to continue the investigation (and if you take too long, someone else will solve the case before you and you lose). There are four cases in all, though I've never gotten past the first one. ^_^;