the cutting room mirror

Little Town Hero

This article has a talk page!This article has a talk page!
view on tcrf.net

Little Town Hero is a little game about a little boy living in a little town, occasionally saving his little townsfolk from not-so-little monsters. It was developed by a little company named Game Freak, better known for their involvement in the Pokémon video game franchise. It also features Toby Fox (with the help of Game Freak's own composer Hitomi Sato) as main composer for the original soundtrack.

It was released only one month before the highly-anticipated Pokémon Sword and Shield, getting very little fanfare and very little praise from critics.

To do:

  • Any more unused graphics?
  • Prerelease page.
  • There are loads of unused animations in the game.

Unused Graphics#

Early Character Icons#

Icon

Filename

Notes

face01

Early design for the protagonist, shown in concept art by art director Haruka Tochigi.

face04_sori

Horse-Off-Course/Solitiba-kun, the mascot of Game Freak's Pocket Card Jockey.

face06_oldman

face07_girl

face08_oldwoman

face09_ojisan

Translation: Uncle

face10_onanoko.png

Translation: Girl

face10_onanoko2

face11_archer

face12_nekko

Translation: Cat

face13_innu

Translation: Dog

face14_hatsumei

Translation: Inventor

face15_heroine

Early design for Pasmina.

face16_uma

Translation: Horse

face16_uma2

Also duplicated under the filename "all".

face17_obachan

Translation: Aunt

Unused Special Effects#

Icon

Filename

Notes

battle_fix01_118

A pair of glaring eyes.

battle_fix01_119

A tongue licking its lips.

battle_fix01_120

A lightbulb representing an idea.

Early Dazzit Icons#

Various assets, including various menu elements and the support characters' abilities. In the final game, the only support character' assistance to manifest in the form of a Dazzit is Margo.

Icon

Final

(There are no green Dazzits in the final game.)

Battle Result#

A sheet of sprites presumably for a transition at the end of each battle. It features a snake motif (as many elements of the town itself).

Unused Scrapbook Mugshots#

picbook_chr_20

picbook_chr_21

picbook_chr_22

picbook_chr_23

picbook_chr_24

picbook_chr_25

picbook_chr_26

picbook_chr_27

picbook_chr_28

picbook_chr_47 - 53

picbook_chr_54

picbook_chr_55

picbook_chr_56

(Blank)

Unused mugshots for the non-unique non-playable characters and the stage support objects. Additionally, 7 consecutive blank mugshot sprites exist suggesting the possibility of scrapped planned characters/bosses.

Full Scrapbook (Final)

Early Battle HUD#

Town (Working Title) - Reveal trailer

eftx_backlinetrace#

Queue bar for the enemy's Dazzits.

eftx_upsuji and etfx_ideasix#

Littletownhero-eftx_upsuji.png Littletownhero-eftx_ideasix.png

Placeholders for how player's Dazzits would be displayed in battle. Both of them use the unused green Dazzit. The second image exemplifies how stat buffs and debuffs would have been shown.

battle fix01#

Some leftovers from the original battle HUD (namely the word "Voltage") exist within many other elements of the final HUD, though they have been obscured by red crosses.

Miscellaneous#

spirits#

Colored crystals with sequenced numbers inside them. Possibly a counter of some sort.

Skill_tree_icons#

Unused Models#

18_sobaY#

Yarn (Present, Used)

Yarn (Past, Unused)

Purl (Used)

At one point, the protagonist Axe travels into the past, where he encounters younger versions of some of the other characters. One of the characters he finds are his friend Pasmina's grandmother Yarne (Soba in Japanese) and Pasmina's long-deceased mother Purl (Fram in Japanese). Apparently Yarne was intended to look younger, however her "young" model is just a duplicate of Purl's model; additionally, Purl doesn't have textures of her own and directly uses young Yarne's textures instead.

19_siro#

A very small kind of sheep-like creature. Rendered in completely different much cartoonish style from the other sheep in the game. Concept art for it appears in the Life in the Village art book.

23_pickel_child#

Unused model

Town (Working Title) - Reveal trailer

An alternate model for Axe, seen during a cutscene in the game's 2018 reveal trailer. Neither the model nor the cutscene are used in the final game.

Unused Music#

Some early versions of existing tracks are present in the files. The differences between them and the final mix are rather minimal ranging from different pitch range and/or instrumentation. The early mixes are louder as well.

Main Theme

maintheme_concept_field (Early)

bgm_cb_prologue (Final)

Field (Coal Mines)

field_idea_COAL_1 (Early)

bgm_cb_field_coal (Final)

Field (Main Street)

field_idea_COMMERCIAL_1 (Early)

bgm_cb_field_commercial (Final)

Field (Farm)

field_idea_FARM_1 (Early)

bgm_cb_field_farm (Final)

Pasmina's Theme

girl_theme (Early)

bgm_cb_ev_girl (Final)

Want To Talk About Sheep?

girl_theme_lively (Early)

bgm_cb_ev_girl_02 (Final)

Win By A Hair

sat_batle_idea_fun (Early)

bgm_cb_bt_fun (Final)

Unused Sounds#

The track "Last Episode!" from Undertale is present as 355709288.wem. Strings in the Main.txt file suggest the track was lifted directly from UNDERTALE Soundtrack as implied by its internal filename "66 Last Episode!". According to an interview, Game Freak used some of the music from Undertale as placeholders without Toby's permission, so this may have been a leftover from that time.

Revisional Differences#

To do:
Conflicting or unknown dates between updates.

Version 1.1.0#

Released on October 16, 2019.

  • Added English language support.

Version 1.2.0#

Released in April 2020 for the Switch eShop version. The physical release of the game and every other platform have this version included by default.

  • Updated copyright on the title screen:

v1.1.0

v1.2.0

  • Added Chinese language (simple and traditional) support.
  • Various optimization improvements.
  • Easy Mode option.

Version 1.2.1#

Released on April 21, 2020.

  • Minor bug fixes.