Destiny of an Emperor

Destiny of an Emperor is an RPG based on a manga called Tenchi wo Kurau, based on a story called Romance of the Three Kingdoms, based on a historical document called the Records of the Three Kingdoms, based on an obscure work called real life.

Sub-Pages#

Prerelease Info Notes Bugs

Unused Graphics#

Chinese Font#

The Japanese version includes 272 Chinese symbols (or Kanji) for the many character names and some words on the party status screen, but left 20 of them unused.

In the US version, the entire set was kept unused.

Japanese title screen font#

Some of the uppercase letters are used for "TM", "Push Start" and "Capcom", but the rest (BDEFGIJKLNQVWXYZ) goes unused, and the lowercase part is never loaded into VRAM, probably due to lack of space after the kana and title graphics.

The US version's lowercase font is based on this one, but bolder.

Japanese font leftovers#

A few font tiles from the Japanese version were left unused on US: "®" in copyright information, the Kanji for gold and food, the dakuten and handakuten, the quote and ellipsis, "MSP" and "S.P" (which became "MTP" and "T.P" in the normal font), and some katakana.

Debug font#

In the Japanese version only, this hex font would be used by the disabled debug features.

Map tiles#

Most of the map graphic sets have unused tiles (and some unused 16×16 and 32×32 groupings, but shared tilesets make it harder to see what they are). Many of them aren't part of 16×16 tiles either, so the palette and layout can only be guessed.

Set		Mockup
0	Overworld
1	House
2	Cave
3	Palace
4	Fort
5	Town
6	Ruins

Unused Items#

Coin chests#

There are 6 types of chests containing different ranges of gold amounts (as "coins"), but only 2 of them are ever used:

Food chests#

There are also 6 types of chests containing different ranges of food amounts, completely unused but functional:

Inventory items#

Some more items are unobtainable and have a blank name in the US version:

Item 1C is an unused duplicate of "Intro Letr" (1A), and 29 has no data.

Unused Generals#

Some generals are never seen, or are only used as NPCs or by name while having full stats and a portrait left unused.

NPC only#

ID	Portrait	Sprite	Name	Soldiers	STR	INT	AGI	Weapon	Def	Zone	Notes
51			Zhang Song	3110	44	198	180	9: Sword	110	Shu	At Shu's entrance
56			Sun Ce	—	0	0	0	0: None	10	Wu	At Fan Shui Guan, dies in the plot before you ever enter Wu
70			Cao Cao	—	0	0	0	0: None	10	—	At Hu Lao Guan and Yang Zhou, uses Guan Xing's portrait
A4			Guan Suo	16540	216	144	198	0: None	10	—	After Si Ma Yi's thunder, he must have been meant to join at that point since he cannot be fired.
A5			Yi Ji	1197	44	200	170	7: Trident	45	Jing Zhou	At his house in Jing Zhou, near Nan Yang

Unseen#

ID	Portrait	Sprite	Name	Soldiers	STR	INT	AGI	Weapon	Def	Zone	Notes
34			Chen Lin	1255	20	170	70	5: Spear	40	Ji Zhou	Served Yuan Shao and would be fought in Ji Zhou, but isn't
9E			Sun Gan	153	42	144	80	0: None	10	Xu Zhou	Also known as Sun Qian, could have been one more ally against the Yellow Scarves but having Mi Zhe and Chen Deng made it unnecessary.
AB			Liu  Chan	—	21	7	0	0: None	10	—	Yes, with two spaces in the middle. This is Liu Shan (Liu Bei's son and successor as Shu emperor in history), maybe meant to join with Zhang Bao and Guan Xing when they replace their fathers.
D3			Xun You	16540	96	204	160	15: Bo Ye	180	Wei	He would be dead before Cao Cao in the plot, so it wouldn't make sense to have him serve Cao Pi in Wei.

E3 is an unused NPC, sharing E4's sprite with a different palette.

05 only exists in the Japanese version, as a generic force named ザントウ with an invalid Chinese spelling and Zhang Fei's sprite.

39, 3C, 45, 55, 98, 9A-9C, A1-A3, A6-A7, and B5-B6 are gaps with no data.

NPC stats#

All NPCs also have dummy partial stats, since their sprite is set after those:

Unused Battles#

All of the unused battles have no location and no end text.

All of the above generals can be found in random encounters but don't have a proper fight, and because of this they cannot be recruited.

50 to 57 are placeholders with empty data at the end of the list.

Unused Text#

Unreferenced#

Referenced#

Some messages are given to NPCs but depend on an event flag that never gets set, specifically one that would indicate Dong Zhuo has been defeated.

Message ID gaps#

Many more have no data, in both versions:

022, 03F, 07E-07F, 0A2, 0BB, 0C0, 0C8-0C9, 0CB, 0D0, 14B, 189, 192, 1BC, 1C0, 1D1, 1D8-1DE, 278, 29B-29F, 2B5, 2F7, 2FB-2FF, 302-304, 312, 344-347

Dictionary entries#

Both versions have a list of common words that can be referenced in text messages to save space, and some of them are also unused.

Japan#

US#

Only one unused word, but many empty/skipped entries, and the dictionary was extended with a Exx range:

Location names#

Some locations have names that are never seen in either version:

• 68 (Silver Key cell fort) is Chang (ジョウザン Jouzan in Japanese)
• 61 (Liu Kui's fort) is Luo Feng Po (ラクホウハ Rakuhouha)

Unused Maps#

Unreachable Areas#

Qing#

Directly north-east of Xu Zhou's area at the beginning (corresponding to Qing in ancient China), there's an unreachable peninsula with only a small amount of ground and invalid encounter zone 0. It might have been previously used for Qing Zhou's cave entrance, before map events made it appear near Qing Zhou itself.

Shu Cave Entrance#

Shu's cave was once planned to start with three hallways of stairs (from right to left) before leading to the main area, but the start point and corresponding exit have been moved directly into the main area. The halls and all other stair destinations are still there, but left unused.

Cui Zhou Ping's Old Home#

The first house in Jing Zhou is Yi Ji's, but has a second entrance warp defined (unused because the first one takes priority) that would lead to Cui Zhou Ping's instead and make Zhu Ge Liang's trip much shorter.

Unused Locations#

Location 4E contains a food shop NPC in the same fort house room used by 7A's inn, but nothing leads there.

Location 26 is unused but has a duplicate entry of 32's NPC in Jian An's old tree house, while 06, 11, 36-4B, and 79 are unused and empty.

Unused Map Screens#

Event Maps#

Many of the event changing maps in the Cxx range (and Dxx for post-event) have unused copies in the common 5xx-7xx range, sometimes earlier versions of them and hinting at the events being a late addition:

ID	Unused	ID	Pre-event	Post-event	Notes
540		C00			The mountains around Qing Zhou had a simpler layout.
663		C01			The bridge in Qing Zhou's cave was already open (identical to post-event), and most likely the NPC requiring Han Zhong would unblock the path instead.
5DC 5DD		C0A C07 C02			The top part is identical to pre-event, but the middle part had more mountains (aligning with the top) and no trees in bottom-left.
57F		C04			The bridge to Ji Zhou was already open, but Yuan Shu's battle couldn't be entered from the weaker left side (or bypassed).
675		C05			Identical to pre-event with the rocks blocking Xu Zhe, but it's unclear what would replace removing the rocks.
780		C06			Identical to post-event with the Silver Key door opened.
602		C08			The bridge to Wu was already open but accessed through Gui Yang, with no mountains around it.

Ji Zhou#

ID	Unused
5C5		Nearly identical to the north-west wall corner near Guang Zong, but with a proper corner and wall connecting to the lower left that's out of sight anyway.
620		This doesn't fit anywhere, but its ID is right between the ones used in the north-east part of Ji Zhou.

633 and C10 have a single row of repeated tiles at the bottom, 634-63C are blank, and C0B-C0F are blank with no corresponding event or post-event map.

Event Flags#

There are global event flags (used range 00-1E), map change flags (00-0A), location based event flags (00-7F with entered/exited, alternate NPC messages, and message ID+1 per NPC), battles cleared/disabled (00-4F), chests opened (8 per location), and hidden items (1 per location).

Global flags 17 and 1B are unused, and using the Silver Key additionally sets (other than opening the door) map flags 0D and 28 which have no corresponding map screen.

Debug Leftovers#

The Japanese version has some debug code still present but unreferenced, this was removed in the US version.

Map Location#

At 3FAE5, this would be toggled by setting RAM 00A6 (otherwise unused) and loading the debug font, then shows hex values in the top-left corner, using sprites and cycling their palette every 4 frames.

In order, this is the location ID, global X position (screen, tile), and Y position.

SRAM Editor#

At 353CA, this would likely be called by a button press anytime and works on its own (it clears the sprite buffer and loads the font), except it uses Player 2 input the game never reads.

This lets you view and edit any byte in SRAM 6000-67FF, also using sprites with a cycling palette, and blinks the selected digit. Press Left/Right to select another digit, Up/Down to change it, and Player 2 Right to quit.

Fixed Soldier Amounts#

Each general's soldier amount is set as a table index (or growth curve index, or 0 for generic forces), instead of a direct value.

That table follows a simple curve of 100 * 1.0489^x rounded down (for index 1 to 127) and has many unused entries, in bold below:

Regional Differences#

Title screen#

Japan	US

The title was changed, the copyright information was expanded, and the animation is disabled but remains functional.

The Japanese title screen's animation can be skipped by pressing Start, this is still there in the US version (with no visible effect) and you must press twice or wait first to enter the menu.

Character names#

Japan	US

Names originally had a Chinese spelling and kana spelling, and both have been changed to a single romanized spelling, now formatted in 1 or 2 lines instead.

Unused localization leftovers#

Japan	US unused	US

When you attack an enemy general (not generic forces), the Japanese version appends "のへい" to the general's name to say you've defeated soldiers from his army. This got translated to "'s army", then cut off with RTS so it only shows the general's name.

The extra text can be restored with Game Genie code XTSSGIAV.

Japan	US unused	US

There's unused code at 3D73A to write a party character's name to a specific location that would fit with the status screen, which did move the soldier count to make space for it but finally kept the 2 line name where the Chinese spelling originally was. The 1 line name from kana spelling was also moved one tile below this, but left unused.

Removed event#

Japan	US

Ling Ling Castle has a secret house with a Pang Tong lookalike NPC who hints at searching around for a hidden Sword on the ground. In the Japanese version however, he said something completely different:

1A9's event code is still there (now unused) in the US version.

Other Oddities#

EXP Curve#

Total EXP required per level is defined in a table and follows a simple growth curve:

• Level 1 needs 20 EXP to reach level 2
• Level 2 to 5 each increase the length by 1.5x exponentially, and the total is rounded down
• Level 6 to 10 increase by 1.4x
• Level 11 to 15 increase by 1.3x
• Level 16 to 20 increase by 1.2x
• Level 21 to 45 increase by 1.1x
• Level 46 to 49 increase by 1.05x

However some of the values are slightly off and look like typos or mistakes:

The table also has a few extra values after the intended maximum level that go unused (except on the Japanese version), and the US version even inserted a few more:

Tao Qian#

At the beginning, Tao Qian in Xu Zhou palace (historically 陶謙, the governor of Xu Province) is getting too old to fight and asks Liu Bei to get rid of the Yellow Scarves and become his heir.

Much later, a completely different Tao Qian (鄧覧 Deng Lan in the Japanese version, also トウケン touken in kana) is fought in Shu but never actually existed as a general, and has the highest ID excluding NPCs.

Pang De#

Pang De is fought halfway through Shu, then can be recruited and would be fairly strong at that point, but his random encounters are in Wei instead and he's worthless by the time you get there. On top of that, even though he has significantly more advanced tactics (level 25 and 200 INT) than anyone else in Shu (level 10-18 and up to 198 INT) when fought, he cannot be a tactician if you recruit him, due to his STR being higher.

This would suggest he was originally meant to show up in Wei (in history, he had served Ma Chao then Cao Cao) then moved to Shu with only his soldier count and equipment adjusted down.

Name references in text#

In both versions, a text command exists to write the name for a specified general/item/location ID. This is sometimes used in odd ways:

• The Japanese version sometimes uses item names outside of the actual item's context, mostly the Trident (けん sword) for the smith's swords and Zhou Letr (てがみ letter) when Xu Zhe leaves.
• Even though Zhang Bao (the son) is never required to join, a few messages in Wu still speak to him by name and he "gets" the Nu Long. The US version also references the other Zhang Bao (from Yellow Scarves) by name each time.
• "Lu Bu" always uses the Shu variant in the US version, and varies (inconsistently with where it's used) on Japanese.
• "Tao Qian" is always the Shu general (see above) on US, and written directly in kana on Japanese.
• "Luo Yang" is appropriately the old or rebuilt Luo Yang on Japanese, but always the rebuilt one on US.
• Chin castle is actually named Chen and doesn't use the location name on US (text says "Chin" as is), but does on Japanese.