Kurukuru Fever

Kurukuru Fever is a strange puzzle game where the play field flips when your pudgy animal friend eats their favorite food.

Unused Graphics#

These are unused graphics that are not known to be part of Kurukuru Food or earlier revisions of final graphics.

FONT4_1, a large A-Z character set, goes seemingly unused in the final release. Headings written in this style are pre-generated and names use a smaller variant.

EFF & EFF3 are effect files using a multitude of palettes. Neither appear to be used, though at least some of their palettes are identifiable. The only effect file still used in final release is K64EFF, used for falling leaf and flower petal effects.

EFF	EFF3

Revision Variants#

There are two older tilesets with icons for food during gameplay, FOOD1 & FOOD2, and both are identical to each other. No palette corresponds to any of the tiles in this tileset, so it is shown grayscale using its index. However, the color of blank tiles is known thanks to a different unused image, T32LOST. These icons are much smaller and greater in number than their final version, K64FOOD. Pineapples are also duplicated.

Final Game	FOOD1 & FOOD2	T32LOST

The unused file JIKANGAS is a wordier, slightly different variant of FE_PLYER.

JIKANGAS (Unused)	FE_PLYER (Final)

The backdrop for gameplay saw a major revision. GAME had smaller tiles but more stacked elements. In the final release, K64GAME is larger and much less intricate, relying on outside files for details.

GAME (Unused)	K64GAME (Final)

K64RZ3 is an unused minor variant of the results screen resources. The final game uses RZ3, which may be a mistake considering the filenames. The placement of letters in "RESULT" is tighter and borders around numerals less prominent than its final counterpart.

K64RZ3 (Unused)	RZ3 (Final)

RANK contains massive versions of the "rank" and letters found in KFONT2J alongside some flowers and hearts. K64RANK, used in the final release, has been completely redesigned. It now only contains window elements and the heading; the ranks themselves are pulled from other files.

RANK (Unused)	K64RANK (Final)

Unused Animations#

Every animal has an unused 5th animation, a running animation similar to their 1st animation. The exception is Gyao, who's 5th animation is identical to its 2nd.

Oyaji (Boss) has two unused animations, his 5th and an additional 8th.

There are three additional animation framesets for the Boss using a different ID, nearly identical to animations A, B, and C. No palette corresponds to these, and they may be left over from Kurukuru Food.

Unused Animation A	Unused Animation B	Unused Animation C
Final Animation C	Final Animation B	Final Animation A

There is also an animation set for an unused mosquito character. No palette(s) corresponds to it, and there is a chance it is an unknown character from Kurukuru Food.

Stage Icon Variants#

Each stage has an earlier, unused stage icon variant. These are smaller versions of the box used in the final game, as well as round icons for the map. They also have a slightly deeper color.

Unused Revision
Final Release

Legal Pages#

Loaded along with the other legal pages is NAMU64, a Namco logo. It is visually identical to the unused file K64NAMU. This is separate from the unused files NAM, NAMCO1, and NAMCO2. Although loaded, it is not printed to the screen.

A separate Takumi legal screen goes unused. The final game uses K64TAKU, sharing the Namco logo's palette from above. This legal screen has its own palette and consists of two files, TAKU1 & TAKU2. From its size, there's a chance it was meant for a System 10 release.

Kurukuru Food#

About one-third of the game files are from Kurukuru Food, an unreleased Namco System 10 title copyright 2002. It has its own selection of animals, foods, more stages, and a partial English translation.

Logos#

There are several logos and variations of the same logo left over from Kurukuru Food. TAITI & TAI2TI are unique in that they are loaded by the final game but remain unused. This is because TAI3TI is used to construct boxes and other window elements. All three share a palette, making this one of few occasions a palette is known.

These are unique from TAI, TAI2, & TAI3, providing the same graphic at different scales.

The title screen used a round bowl of fruit and similar round logo with the title written inside. The fruit version has a known palette and is provided at two different scales. TAIT2561 is a 256x256 image, and a larger scale image is provided by TAIT2562 & TAIT2563.

A logo with the title in it exists at multiple scales, but no known palette corresponds to it. A recolorized version is provided here, based on the logos above. These are clearly the original titlescreen logos, as their filenames KURU1 through KURU5 correspond to the final version's title screen, N_KURU1 through N_KURU5.

Animals#

Kurukuru Foodhas its own unique set of animals, and even these went through revision changes. As fortune would have it, their names are still present in leftover text banks. These would be seen on the Stage Select screens, filesSTSELE1B,STSELE2B, andSTSELE3B''. The "B" animal variants correspond to the text in the text banks and have identifiable palettes, unlike mostFood'' images.

The earlier stage select images use an unnamed fennec fox in place of the mechanical dog. No existing palettes correspond to these images. Besides not having backgrounds, the artwork varies from the later "B" types. These are files STSELE1, STSELE2, and STSELE3.

Large versions of these characters are used for matchups, each with a background made of its signature food. Being an older revision, no existing palettes correspond to these images so they are shown here interpreting their index as grayscale.

Another set is used for the opening attract sequence. These are files OPEN12 through OPEN17. An image named OPEN1 does not exist, but a palette used in the final game has that name. The final panel also includes icons for the ten different types of food.

Food#

Food and Fever use different sets of food. No copies of the tilesets from gameplay exist. There are two monochrome tilesets with fruit shadows however, aptly named SHADOW1 & SHADOW2. These could be colorized and placed behind other objects, or they can also be used for occlusion effects.

Legal Pages#

Namco left a multitude of copyright images throughout the game, in addition to the NAMU64 and K64NAMU files previously mentioned above. COPY has copyright information and logos for both Namco and Takumi, most likely intended for the title screen. NAM only lists the copyright date, whereas NAMCO1 and NAMCO2 are full copyright pages.

Text Banks#

Kurukuru Fever only uses two text banks, KFONTJ2 & KYARA_N, for all on-screen messages and character names. These files are in Japanese. However, there are many unused text banks, in both English and Japanese, including several listing the original Kurukuru Food characters. In the English file KFONT3E, these Food character names are replaced with chapter numbers.

Japanese	English

The final textbank, KFONT7J, lists the Kurukuru Foodcharacter names using the same typeface as the other messages. Final release usesKYARA_N'', printing theKurukuru Fever'' character names in a highly-stylized font.

Kurukuru Food	Final Release

A bank with elements for a Game Over screen has a row of icons for the Kurukuru Food characters.

Credits#

As the target platform was the Namco System 10 the credits cite their engineer staff in place of Aruze and an earlier copyright date of 2002. Just in case you didn't know who produced the game by now, there is an additional Namco copyright page.

Kurukuru Food Credits
Kurukuru Fever Credits

Here is a transcription of Kurukuru Food's credits:

   NAMCO PRODUCTION STAFF
    Directrial Staff    Koji "KMD" Kawashima
    Visual Designer MEDER
    Hardware Engineer   Shoichiro Akamatsu  Shigehiro Takamoto
    HIROTAKA WATANABE
    TAKUMI Corporation Staff    KOBAYASHI KURIHARA
        KATO OHTO   MORIOKA ITOU    MARUYAMA WATABE
        OHSE TADAISHI   KAMINISHI YSP   OZAKI FUKIMOTO
    Special Thanks  Kenichi Takizawa    Hiroyuki Hiraishi
    FONTWORKS international Limited
    Technical Design
        Team Millennium i2f
    Production Coordinater  Tetsuo Takeuchi Genzo Watanabe
    Producer    Akira Osugi
    Executive Producer  Shukuo Ishikawa
    NAMCO PRODUCTION STAFF  Tetsuo Takeuchi Shukuo Ishikawa
    Executive Producer  Akira Osugi
    Producer    Genzo Watanabe
    Produced by NAMCO
    2002 NAMCO Ltd. All rights reserved.

Compare to Kurukuru Fever's credits, in the original engrish:

   ARUZE PRODUCTION STAFF
    Director    Kentaro Hayashi
    Super Viser Kazunobu Sato   Junichi Kogo    Ayako Suda
    Design  Keiko Ootani
    Mechanical Design   Takeshi Okuda   Tomohito Terakawa
    Erectric
        Yuuya Konno
    TAKUMI Corporation Staff
        KOBAYASHI KATO  KURIHARA OOTO   MORIOKA ITOU
        MARUYAMA WATABE OOSE KAMINISHI
        TADAISHI YSP    OZAKI FUJIMOTO
    Special Thanks
        Kenichi Takizawa    Hiroyuki Hiraishi
    FONTWORKS international Limited i2f
    Producer    Shinji Hara Masaki Matsuno
    Executive Producer  Kazuo Okada
    All ARUZE Staff
    Created by TAKUMI Corporation
    Presented by
    2003 ARUZE LTD., ALL RIGHT RESERVED