Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is the direct sequel to Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and doesn’t even try to conceal the fact you are essentially playing as (a potential) Dracula. It improves upon its predecessor, even making the support cast playable in an alternate mode that pays homage to Castlevania III.

Sub-Page#

Prototype Info

Julius Mode Unused Coding#

Since the menu is disabled in Julius Mode, a lot of content that would show in menus would not show in normal gameplay. Using Action Replay codes to equip Julius Mode-exclusive items and abilities on Soma, or using the infamous Succubus Glitch to get as Soma to areas normally exclusive to Julius Mode characters, you can uncover some otherwise unused descriptions.

Abilities Coded as Souls#

All of Julius, Yoko, and Alucard's special moves from Julius Mode are actually coded as bullet type souls. They can be equipped on Soma via messing with Action Replay codes or using the Succubus glitch. Aside from playing Julius and Yoko voice clips, they work exactly as intended. Pictured above is Yoko's Holy Flame spell.

Since the menu is normally inaccessible in Julius Mode, it's impossible to see their names and descriptions. However, their names are blanked out, and their description reads “NULL”, in the English version. The descriptions are also blanked out in other non-Japanese languages.

These souls cannot be used in Enemy Set mode as they don't show up in the menu.

To do: Can they be forced? For that matter, what happens if you force other enemy-less souls (i.e. Doppelganger) in Enemy Set?

The following Action Replay DS codes can be used to add these Souls into Soma's inventory in the US version:

• Bat Form (Alucard) + Holy Flame (Yoko) - 220F70E7 00000011
• Blue Splash (Yoko) + Holy Lightning (Yoko) - 220F70E8 00000011
• Holy Cross + Holy Water (Julius) - 220F70E9 00000011
• Grand Cross (Julius) - 220F70EA 00000001. Note that this will remove the Guardian Soul "Flying Armor", if present. Change to "00000011" to prevent this.

Unused Item Coding#

It's possible for Soma to equip the Alucard Sword via hacking or a glitch, and it works exactly as intended complete with an A button special attack, but cannot be swung at an angle by Soma. It has an otherwise unused description saying "Alucard's favourite sword." It is equipped by default to Alucard during Julius Mode.

There is also an unused "Bare knuckles" weapon with a description simply reading "Bare fists." This weapon is...well, Soma without any weapons, punching things. Pretty redundant as you can unequip him of his stuff with the "--" option. It has no icon, defaulting to the one used for Knife. Curiously, if this item is in the player's inventory at the start of a brand-new game, it gets equipped instead of the Knife.

One can also glitch Julius' Vampire Killer whip into Soma's game. It works correctly but its menu icon is also the Knife, it has no description in non-Japanese regions, and it cannot be dangled by Soma.

These weapons can be added to Soma's inventory with the following Action Replay DS codes (US version only):

• Bare Knuckles - 220F71E0 00000001. Note that this will remove the knife... uh... "Knife", if present. Change to "00000011" to prevent this.
• Alucard Sword - 220F71EE 00000001. Note that this will remove the Great Sword "Claymore", if present. Change to "00000011" to prevent this.
• Whip - 220F7207 00000001

Unused Items#

There is an unused item called "Cᴀsᴛʟᴇ Mᴀᴘ 0". It is probably a leftover debug item since:

• The 1st unexplored map appears when a player starts a new game.
• Cᴀsᴛʟᴇ Mᴀᴘ 1 and Cᴀsᴛʟᴇ Mᴀᴘ 2 are used for the 2nd and 3rd explorable areas, respectively.

To add this item to Soma's inventory, use the following Action Replay DS code (US version only):

• CASTLE MAP 0* - 220F71D1 00000010. Note that this will remove the item "Rusty Food Tin", if present. Change to "00000011" to prevent this.

Japanese Version#

In the Japanese version, the Julius Mode weapons have actual descriptions, of sorts:

Julius' subweapons simply have "J" in their text box.

• 十字架 = Cross
• 聖水 = Holy water
• グランドクルス = Grand Cruz (Grand Cross)

Yoko's spells are labelled "ヨーコの魔法", meaning "Yoko's magic".

• ホーリーフレイム = Holy Flame
• ブルースプラッシュ = Blue Splash
• ホーリーライトニング = Holy Lightning

These names were made official as of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair.

Alucard's bat transformation gets "アルカードの技", translating as "Alucard's ability".

• コウモリ = Bat

"Bare Knuckles" gets "素手", meaning..."Bare fists". How succinct.

"アルカード愛用の剣", meaning "Alucard's favorite sword".

Julius' famous Vampire Killer gets "聖なる鞭", or "Holy Whip".

It seems that the development team had all of the Julius Mode weapons and powers complete with "official" names primed and ready for the Japanese version, only to get scrapped for the final release. (The names for Julius Mode weapons and abilities, with their original descriptions, are actually listed in the game's official Japanese guide.)

And yes, there's more to the Vampire Killer than just the above.

When the Vampire Killer is equipped onto the glitched Alucard in the main game or if it's hacked into his possession in Julius mode, the player can perform an odd diagonal swing similar to the Alucard Sword's diagonal slash. (It's not known exactly why, but it's likely it was an unused whip move. In most cases, as it is separate from the regular whip sprites it was probably either part of a whip retract move after Julius' normal attack animation or an undeveloped Super Castlevania IV-style diagonal attack.)

• In Aria of Sorrow, Julius has the whip retract animation after a whip swing.
• In Harmony of Despair, Julius gains the ability to swing the whip in 8 directions.

Unused Soul Levels#

To do: Screenshots, movies, anything! Also, test more souls/levels! Please and thank you!

By using Action Replay or the Succubus Glitch, one can gain more than the maximum of 9 souls for each Monster Soul. As it turns out, doing so reveals that some souls also have unused level-ups. Numbers of souls collected are stored in 4 bits of RAM, which limits their value to 15, even in a glitched state.

Note: Only Souls that do something apparently different are listed here.

Formation of four bats out of three. All four bats can attack.

Alucard's Fist Animation#

Alucard has his punching animation from Symphony of the Night available should the player hack a fist-based weapon onto him, then perform the special attack of such weapon. (The game loads Alucard's sword animation for regular attacks of most fist-based weapon.)

Unused Text#

A text dump has unused text for a part where Hammer would be playable during Julius Mode. The poor guy doesn't join the fun in the final version. It's assumed, based on the other playable characters being analogous to the ones in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, that he would've played similarly to Grant Danasty.

A conversation between Hammer and Soma. It would be possible that at one point of development, Hammer also had his own dialogue with Evil Soma, but was eventually scrapped.

Notably, Soma's portrait pointer in this short dialogue points to portrait #0x00, which is Soma's normal portrait, while Evil Soma uses portrait pointer #0x05.

A conversation where Yoko talks to Soma about Julius's hinting at an unused piano puzzle. The piano is only mere scenery in the final game, though the idea for a piano-based puzzle was later revisited in Harmony of Despair.

Unused Sound#

To do: Rip them. Also these are only spotted from Japanese version but not checked in others.

Evil Soma will speak a line before fighting with Julius team, where the word after "come on" (voice clip #097 in sound mode) varies according to the player character. He calls Julius "Julius Belmont" (voice clip #098), Yoko "Fernandes" (voice clip #099), and Alucard "Alucard" (voice clip #100) accordingly. However, voice clip #101 would result in "Come on, human!" instead. This may have been used in the otherwise scrapped playable Hammer, being a common human.

This combination of voice clips can also be heard if normal Soma is glitched into the Evil Soma fight.

To do: There may be other voice clips which ended unused in the gameplay.

Unseen Enemy List Entry#

The enemy list entries for the Julius-exclusive Evil Soma (No.117: Soma "The Dark Lord") and his second form ("Dracula") were blanked out in the final version's enemy list, but can be triggered by hacking or glitching Soma into the Julius mode final fight.

They have descriptions in the Japanese version:

Unused Castle Maps#

The final version of the game only uses unexplored (castle) maps for three areas of the game: The Lost Village, Wizardry Lab and Garden of Madness. You automatically start with the first one, and you can purchase the other two.

There is data in the game for all areas having unexplored maps. Most of them tend to be far more complete than the three you have access to; mostly the hidden rooms are not shown.

Notes:

• Mine of Judgment and Condemned Tower share the same unexplored map block, despite being two separate areas.
• There is a hex value gap between The Pinnacle and The Abyss, going from 02 to 08. It's possible 04 was intended for Mine of Judgment.

Unused Graphics#

The Konami Screen never calls Konami's KCET department in the DS Castlevania games.

Among the title screen option graphics in so/p_tiobj.dat a copyright information text is also present but never used in-game. Most other handheld Castlevania games after Circle of the Moon had a copyright information text, make Dawn of Sorrow a lone exception.

An icon for a stopwatch sub-weapon is stored along with the rest of the Julius mode sub-weapon icons, but was not used in the final version. The reason why it got scrapped is unknown; probably because:

- Soma's time stop ability (Zephyr's soul) has a more "devil-ish" theme which is not suitable for re-using it as sub-weapons.

- The skill activation voice of Zephyr's soul defaults to Soma's voice in the Japanese version.

A golden version of the clock hands that appear in Zephyr's boss room. Possibly meant for the stopwatch sub-weapon above. No hitbox properties exist.

Soma never gives the player a view of his back when standing still in the final game.

A (presumably) Werewolf soul variant that was abandoned fairly early in development progress.

Malphas never meets the player upside-down in the game, nor in Symphony of the Night.

Malphas never transforms into raven form, nor in Symphony of the Night.

Road Blocker variant inside a room. Used in demo versions as road blockers that prevent player's action toward buggy/unimplemented area.

Unused "frozen" sprites for Soma. Stored with his Petrification sprites. Uses an unused palette, and has no valid animations or data beyond the sprites.

Symphony of the Night Leftovers#

Alucard's old air kick motion	Alucard's new air kick motion

Alucard got a "new" air dive kick motion that was, originally, his air diagonal attack with bare hand from Symphony of the Night, which left the old air dive kick motion unused.

Alucard's stone animation #1 from Symphony of the Night. In Julius Mode Alucard can't be turned into stone nor affected by bad status. The original graphics are intact but the palette can't be loaded properly.

Alucard's stone animation #2.

Among the Fleaman graphics is an animation of the Flea Rider enemy from Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. This holds true in both Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia.

The Black Panther graphics contain the melting graphics used in Symphony of the Night. In Dawn of Sorrow, the Black Panther stays as a regular panther rather than dissolving into liquid.

Imp's graphic assets contains the balloon enemy from Symphony of the Night. Balloon itself didn't make an appearance until Order of Ecclesia.

Slogra's vertical stab from the air, leftover from Super Castlevania IV and Symphony of the Night. He did team up with Gaibon in the DS games but they never perform combination attacks, nor had an appearance as a boss.

• Hitbox intact.

Gaibon's old shooting pose on the ground, only used as a boss-mode-only attack.

• Hitbox intact.

Gaibon's old pose when he's defeated on the ground.

Evil Soma's second form has graphic data of Dracula's fatal rain attack (during his second form, from Symphony of the Night prologue battle), with hitbox intact.

Dracula's old fireball attack.

• Hitbox intact.

Unused Palettes#

	Used Palette	Symphony of the Night Palette	Unused Palette	Notes
Dracula				Dracula's prologue palette from Symphony of the Night remains in the graphic file.
Orobourous/Quetzalcoatl				Old palette for defeated familiar-like Orobourous in Symphony of the Night is still accessible in Quetzalcoatl's graphic data.
Warg				The Warg retains its original palette from Symphony of the Night. Dawn of Sorrow uses the palette associated with the Fire Wargs, which is supported by its file name "fenra". "fenra" is short hand for Fenrir, which is the Japanese name for the Fire Wargs, compared to the standard Wargs called "Anfauglir" in Japanese.

Oddities#

Edward Scissorhands#

The graphics data for the boss Zephyr internally refers to him as "EDWARD". Since he is not referred to as such in the game and based on his character design, this is seemingly a reference to Tim Burton's film, Edward Scissorhands.

Regional Differences#

Title Screen#

Japan	International

Other#

• The Japanese version has more numerous voice samples. For example, when you enter Hammer's shop he says "welcome" ("Irasshai") along with a few other comments after you buy and sell items (e.g. "Is that all?"). The same goes for bosses. In the international versions, the voice samples that have no suitable English substitutions were taken out.
• In the Japanese version, you can't skip past cutscenes during the first playthrough. In the international versions you can by hitting Start. This became the tradition of all three DS titles.