Blinx: The Time Sweeper

Early GraphicsThomas was everywhere.

Unused Videos#

matu#

Two alternate clips from the game's opening. Besides being longer and missing visual effects and audio, the first clip is reversed from the opening, and the second one has explosions. These can be seen in a trailer for the game.

Leftover Trailer from the Official Xbox Magazine and TGS 2002 (Xbox ISM) Demo Discs#

What looks like an early intro video, but could also have been made as a trailer, since it shows a release date at the end.

E3 Opening#

Audio couldn't be found for the E3 opening so the audio from the final game was used over it. Notable differences:

• Every gameplay segment was rerecorded, the final shows off more.
• The font used for time controls was changed.
• The Dust Keeper boss is colored red here instead of yellow. This seems to have been changed very late in development, as it appears red in all early footage, and even in the final game's prologue cutscene.
• The Dust Keeper summons a large boulder instead of a 16-ton weight.

Time Square Music#

The last 20 seconds of the music for the game's first round aren't played in-game, because it loops right before it. Other tracks have something similar, however it's usually just an echo effect for a second.

Alternate Time Up Audio#

A much longer and simpler version of the time up audio. Oddly, it's the last of the numbered tracks, the used version is one of the first.

Demo Leftovers#

To do: There's more, hidden in the main menu graphics.

Used in the TGS2002 demo (Publicly released on the Xbox ISM 2002 disc).

Used in the Japanese demo released a month after TGS2002.

Used in both available demos for the US release of BLiNX: The Time Sweeper.

Save/Load?#

It's not clear what these were used for, they likely were used for saving and loading the game, but could also have been used to debug the time control game mechanics and replays.

Unused Item#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: This can be added in by replacing 0x0B (the flower pot near the second button in round 1-1) in the stage object table in the xbe at address 0x351EE0 with 0x53 (normal bullet). There is also "Bossbomb"(0x57, has no icon and works like a regular bomb), 2 piles of bricks (0x35 and 0x36) and "plank" (0x24).

Hidden Font Text#

Hidden within the font texture is text that shows the name and size of the font used.

Unused World Titles#

In all versions of Blinx: The Time Sweeper there are unused internal names for all of the levels.

rd1 pelura 1 
rd1 pelura 2 
rd1 pelura 3
rd1 boss
rd2 canal 1 
rd2 canal 2 
rd2 canal 3
rd2 boss

rd3 cave 1
rd3 cave 2
rd3 cave 3
rd3 boss
rd4 kortam 1
rd4 kortam 2
rd4 kortam 3
rd4 boss

rd5 words 1
rd5 words 2
rd5 words 3
rd5 boss
rd6 valley 1
rd6 valley 2
rd6 valley 3
rd6 boss

bossrush 1
bossrush 2
bossrush 3
bossrush 4
rd7 sunless 1
rd7 sunless 2
rd7 sunless 3
rd7 boss

rd8 fwire 1
rd8 fwire 2
rd8 fwire 3
rd8 boss
last demo
rd10-1(ending)
----
last boss

Revisional Differences#

To do: Get screenshots and see if there are any other changes.

Later releases of the game added demos and previews of other games. Within the demo files is some dummied out text in the credits for NFL Fever 2003:

# CREDITS.TXT
#
# This file contains the data for the scrolling credits screen.
#
# How it works:
#
# Lines that start with a # are comments and will be ignored.
# Blank lines will also be ignored -- to have a blank line in the credit scroll,
# make a line containing a single space.
#
# Lines beginning with an @ are directives. The following directives
# are available:
#
# @align [left|right|center] : specify alignment of the scrolling text
# @font  [fontname]          : specify the font of the text. Valid values are:
#                                body, title, button, debug, quartz, body_small,
#                                help, script_title, bignums, online, bigtext
#                                Omit fontname for default
# @linespace [#]             : specify the number of pixels between lines, or
#                              omit for default 
#
# All other lines are scrolling text. A backslash (\) is used for formatting.
# The following formatting tags are available:
#
# \b  : toggle boldface
# \i  : toggle italics
# \n  : normal (boldface + italics off)
# \s  : toggle drop shadow (default = on)
# \c  : color (follow with 8 hex digits describing the color as AARRGGBB, or
#       00000000 to revert to default color)
# \\  : backslash (use if you actually want a backslash character)
# 
# Directives and formatting tags are case-insensitive.
#

# End of credits