Mid-1991 Overdump

This is a sub-page of Proto:The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

ROM MapA rundown of where to find A Link to the Past data in the overdump. EntitiesUnique entities that didn't make it to the final game.

Player#

Link's sprites are overwritten by Super Donkey data, but some palettes remain.

Link#

From analyzing Link's sprite palettes, located at 0xF5DBB, it is possible to infer that Link's hat would not have changed with his tunic in the overdump. Also, the purple color used by the water in his swimming sprites isn't present. Instead, that color is completely black.

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

Equipment#

Swords	Shields

When the palettes are applied to sprites, the result looks like this:

Prototype Swords	Prototype Shields
Final Swords	Final Shields

Mini-Maps#

Light World#

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

These appear to be from the era of development when the Tower of Hera was on the far western edge of Death Mountain.

• Kakariko Village is conspicuously missing its weathervane, with a pool of water instead being present.
• The graphics for many key places like the Eastern Palace, Hyrule Castle, and the towers were redrawn for the final game.
• The Death Mountain layouts are different.
• There is no ledge with the world transition tile in the Desert of Mystery. (It's also absent in the developer workspace data.)
• The Desert Palace's exterior is far simpler, with fewer labyrinthine entrances and exits connecting to the overworld. This corresponds to the dungeon's environmental data in the prototype as well.
• Various other minor cave, house, and water pool location differences from the final game also abound to one who looks closely.

Dark World#

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

• The Pyramid of Power has a smaller three-tiered design here, which was likely going to be updated soon given the environmental data present in this build.

Exteriors#

The overworld maps in A Link to the Past are built using 32×32 metatiles. Each metatile is comprised of four 16×16 metatiles. Separate arrays exist for each quadrant of these 32×32 metatiles/map squares (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, and bottom-right) which define which 16×16 metatiles/quadrants to use.²

Unfortunately, the entirety of the Light World's tile maps and half of the Dark World's tile maps were overwritten by Super Donkey data. However, some compressed graphical data for these areas remains. In fact, all but the first 199 16×16 metatiles still exist. Because they are compressed, they are not directly visible in programs that read raw graphics data. The data starts at 98000, with the first completely intact compressed tileset starting at 98219 (without Super Donkey, they would start at address 80000).

In both the overdump and the final game, the 16×16 metatiles are stored in the order in which they are first used. These tiles are ordered left-to-right, top-to-bottom for each 512×512 screen of the map. Differences in this order indicate changes made to the map layout. For example, it is evident from the order of the 16×16 metatiles that the overdump dates from an era where the Tower of Hera and Ganon's Tower were situated against rock walls located at the top-left corner of Death Mountain in the Light World and Dark World, respectively (a fact reinforced by the minimaps). Additionally, judging by its absence from the 16×16 metatile data, the Triforce room was yet to exist at this time, its graphics file filled with placeholder X graphics.

Tiles#

Light World#

All of the 16×16 metatiles used by the top two quadrants of the Lost Woods and part of the Lumberjacks' Estate are missing (tiles 00 to C6), but the rest is still present.

To do: Consider separating and reuploading the Light World tiles from the tile image above and analyzing them.

In analyzing the Light World tiles, the following can be concluded:

• Rather than the slab that needs to be interpreted by the Book of Mudora to enter the Desert Palace, there is a curious ground design instead.
• The swamp shrine that allows the water to be drained seems to have a design at its front instead of the stairs we see in the final game, indicating that perhaps it would need to be opened in some manner, or it would only be accessible from a teleport from the Dark World using the Magic Mirror (or its earlier equivalent at this time in development).

Dark World#

To do: Consider separating and reuploading the Dark World tiles from the tile image above and analyzing them.

Graphics for Skull Woods and the Maze of Darkness were overwritten by Super Donkey data.

By analyzing the tiles, the following is evident:

• The Dark World version of Death Mountain lacks the 32×32 brown stones from which magma drips.
• There's no Dark World version of the large rock.
• The gargoyle blocking the entrance to the Thieves' Town dungeon was originally supposed to disappear entirely instead of just losing the prongs of its trident. This may imply that the method of entry (pulling on the prongs) was different.

Because the Dark World is missing much of its tile map data due to being overwritten, it looks very incomplete. In super_donkey_1.bin, the arrays for the bottom-left and bottom-right quadrants are completely overwritten by data from Super Donkey. As a result, every other row would normally appear as garbled graphical data, so these rows have instead been made solid gold in the map images below.

Mattrizzle, who ripped the graphics above, made an attempt at restoring the Dark World by filling in many of the gaps:

To do: Describe the process here.

Special Maps#

To do: Get the most complete map possible for Special Maps.

Interiors#

Many early and in-progress cave, dungeon, and house environments are present in the prototype's data. Some rooms appear to have been built in a more basic form, but still remotely resemble what they became after more details were added. Some of the house rooms, for example, are close enough in design and purpose that one might be able to - with some degree of confidence - deduce what they became in the final game. Some dungeons are recognizable by a few rooms that bear similarity to the final game with the tile sets used as another helpful guide. Other rooms are fascinatingly alien compared to the final game, such as the 4×4 room with a massive labyrinth of corridors seen in what appears to have become Misery Mire.

This data may also give a rough sample with which to form an idea of how the developers went about building dungeons: brainstorming the rough concepts for dungeon room designs, then doing a later pass to either scrap, redo, repurpose, or refine them. Some designs were discarded entirely, and additional effort went into adding more detail to polish up those designs they kept.

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

Holes#

Not activated	Activated

Not activated	Activated

Not activated	Activated

Unused Room#

This room was used as Room 116, but it was subsequently replaced by one of the test rooms.

Unused	Used

Test Rooms#

In the prototype dating from mid-June 1991, the Dark World contained the entrances to every dungeon except Turtle Rock and Ganon's Tower, which had not yet been developed at that time. Thieves' Town exists, but its entrance appears to be located in the Light World. However, there are five non-dungeon entrances on the map, four of which are used solely to access test rooms.

Entrance	Entrance	Entrance	Entrance
Room	Room	Room	Room

This test room no longer appears to be used in the prototype, but it seems to share the same entrance as one of the test rooms.

Entrance	Room

HUD & Menus#

HUD#

The HUD tile map is located at EC719 in super_donkey_1.bin. Its arrangement is similar to the prerelease screenshots from 1991-04, but the Magic Meter's graphics were changed by this time to no longer resemble a bottle. The meter bar itself has an incorrect palette, and a misplaced key icon occupies what should be a solid black tile, but this would be overwritten dynamically in code.

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

The code to update the meter and the rupee, bomb, arrow, and key counters is located at PC address EC4CA. Unlike the final version, it seems you would be able to hold more than 99 arrows and more than 9 keys, as these counters can display up to three and two digits, respectively.

Pause Menu - Overworld#

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

The action text visible here is はしる (Run), かつぐ.3 (Lift.3), はなす (Talk), およぐ (Swim), and よむ (Read).

Instead of Crystals, there's space for 8 coins. In RAM lists in the game's source code, Crystals are referred to as "force coins", with "force" presumably referring to the Triforce. The reason there are 8 of them, rather than 7 to match the number of Crystals in the final game, is because there were originally eight maidens to rescue.

At one point in development, and likely still at the time the Overdump was created, the Power Glove, Book of Mudora, and Zora Flippers were dropped by the first three bosses as a reward for defeating them, rather than Pendants. The Pendant, meanwhile, was a singular usable item, and not just a quest token.

Pause Menu - Underworld#

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

Pause Menu - Covered Text#

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

The action text visible here is はしる (Run), かつぐ.1 (Lift.1), はなす (Talk), およぐ (Swim), よむ (Read), いのる (Pray), and ？. The final two are covered by item icons and wouldn't normally be visible. While ？ is rather mysterious, Pray is a removed action.

Dungeon Map Screen#

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

Item Pickup Icons#

To do: Reupload these with the proper palettes, if possible. Does any code remain for the more mysterious ones?

At BE5C2:

At BEB63:

At C017D:

Inventory Item Icons#

Starting at 0xEBF87 in the super_donkey_1 ROM is the tile layout data for the inventory icons. The palette data starts at 0xF610D. Icons without gaps between them seem to be related to each other. Strangely, not all graphics are used in this iteration of icons. All swords and shields look the same, even though the variants exist in the tile data. There's also no blue tunic, even though the palette exists for Link wearing it. Curiously, while the potion bottles still use their old narrow design, the ones for the bee and fairy use the larger, rounder style used in the final for the bottle.

Items with Name Text#

Super Donkey Prototype
Icon	Name

Items without Name Text#

Super Donkey Prototype	Final

Audio#

Music#

A theme based on Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. This is the only music used in the prototype, serving as a placeholder.

Sound#

To do: SFX Test can be used to research sound effects in the overdump (Source : Dark Linkaël)

Samples#

Text#

What remains of the script can be found at 0x6BC00, which corresponds to a PC address of 0x0DBC00. This matches the origin point given at the top of zel_msge.asm, a source code file that contains a version of the game's text that's even earlier than this one. The final game's text is found at 0xE00000 (PC address 0x1C8000).

The final message here is Loyal Sage message 0034 (source code ID), which appears to be cut off after the first line. The text encoding also matches the one used in zel_msge.asm. While this version of the encoding is also used by the localizations of the game, it does not match the encoding of the final Japanese releases.

000x: System Messages#

[7f]

[7a 00]
[76]　　　
[75]　　＞
[68]

>

[7a 00]
[75]　　　
[76]　　＞
[68]

>

[7a 00]
ＳＡＶＥしてつづける
[75]ＳＡＶＥしてやめる
[76]ＲＥＴＲＹ
[7f]

Save and Continue
Save and Quit
Retry

[7a 00]
[67]０は　[6c 00]、　１は　[6c 01]
[75]２は　[6c 02]、　３は　[6c 03]
[7f]

0 is [6c 00], 1 is [6c 01].
2 is [6c 02], 3 is [6c 03].

001x: Link's Uncle#

[77 01][67][リンク]、わしはちょっと
[75]出かけてくる。
[76]おまえは　 ねていなさい。
[7e][73]朝までにはもどってくる。
[73]家を出るんじゃないぞ。
[7f]

[Link], I'm going out for
a bit.
You should be asleep.
I'll be back by morning.
Don't leave the house.

[77 01][67]うう…。[リンク]、おまえだけ
[75]は、まきこみたくなかった…
[76]家を出るなと言ったのに…
[7e][73]この剣と盾をもって行け
[73]ゼルダを助けてやるのだ
[73]あの娘は、おまえの……　…
[7f]

Unnh... [Link], you're the one person
I didn't want to get wrapped up in this...
I told you not to leave the house...
Take this sword and shield and
rescue Zelda.
That girl is your...... ...

002x: Hylian Soldiers#

[77 01][67]子どもが　夜ふけにウロウロ
[75]してるんじゃない！
[76]大人になってからだよ。
[7f]

Kids shouldn't wander around
in the middle of the night!
Wait till you grow up.

[77 01][67]道 に迷ったらＸボタンＰＵＳＨ
[75]　地図が見れる　…　…
[76]　　おまえ　しってるか？
[7f]

When you lose your way, push
the X button to look at the map... ...
Did you know that?

[77 01][67]物にさわって　Ａボタンをお す
[75]　物が　かつげたりする　…
[76]おまえ　　しってるか？
[7f]

Press the A button while touching
an object to lift it...
Did you know that?
 

[77 01][67]おまえが大きくなって　剣を
[75]　手にした時はＢボタンで使え
[76]おまえ　わすれるなよっ！
[7f]

When you grow up and get a
sword, use it with the B button.
You better not forget!

[77 01][67]　地図の上で光る点は
[75]　たぶん　目的地だ　…　…
[76]おまえ　しって るか？
[7f]

The glowing mark on your map
might be your goal... ...
Did you know that?

[77 01][67]おれ達とはなすと　イロイロ
[75]わかってタメになるぞ　…
[76]おまえ　しってるやろ！
[7f]

You can learn a lot, talking to us.
It'll help you out...
You know that, right!

003x: Loyal Sage#

[77 01][67]賢者 達に会いなさい。そして
[75]マスターソードを手に入れる
[76]ことです。
[7f]

Meet the Sages. Then,
get the Master Sword.

[77 01][67]おお、ゼルダ無事でしたか！
[75][リンク] 　お前が救け出して
[76]くれたのですね。
[7f]

Princess Zelda, you are safe!
Is this your doing, [Link]?

[77 01][67]　…　…　…　…　　うむ

... ... ... ... Hrm.

References#