Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is the fourth installment in the Mario & Luigi RPG series, featuring an evil dream vampire, a narcoleptic Luigi, and quite a few pillows.

Prerelease Info Development TextThis game has a LOT of developer text left in its files. Regional Text DifferencesGo bonk your own blocks!

Internal Project Name#

The game is internally referred to as REDSPARK, fitting with the other Mario games. Another would likely be MILLI4C where MILLI likely stands for Million and 4C is likely For CTR.

Unused Control Tag Groups#

The game's text files make use of a lot of control tags ingame to modify text and/or make the game perform special actions. Two are not defined in the game's files but do work if manually added.

Control Tag Group 2#

This tag centers all text.

00 00: Right
01 00: Left
02 00: Top
03 00: Bottom
04 00/+: ?

Control Tag Group 6#

This tag alters the textbox.

01 00: Wide text on wide textbox
02 00: Wide text on standard textbox

Unused Bros Attacks#

A few Bros Attacks were planned to return from previous entries in the series, but were cut for unknown reasons.

Ice Flower#

Very incomplete and likely scrapped early on. The item itself () is the only thing related to the Ice Flower, with the other Bros sprites on this sheet being unedited copies of other regular battle sprites, such as Mario and Luigi running toward and away from the camera. Oddly, most of these sprites are related to flying.

Yoo Who Cannon#

The sprites for the Yoo Who Cannon are noticeably more complete than the Ice Flower's, with it only really lacking the necessary sprites for the cannons, which are barely edited from the ones used in Bowser's Inside Story.

Jump Helmet#

The sprites for the Jump Helmet are largely complete, and the attack was even changed to make use of the new foreground-to-background battle mechanic. The reason this attack was removed is unclear, but it may have been because the attack relied on both the Top and Touch Screens, similar to Bros Attacks in the previous games, while Dream Team only uses the Top Screen in battles.

A fully realized version of this attack was included in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, with Mario and Luigi being swapped.

	Mario bouncing on the Jump Helmet with Good timing.
	Luigi waving after Mario successfully lands the attack.
	Luigi freaking out after Mario presumably misses the Jump Helmet.
	Luigi running to catch up with Mario after bouncing him forward.
	Same as above, except Luigi is adjusting his path to stay under Mario.
	Luigi bouncing Mario up into the air.

Unused Sprites#

Antasma#

An unused animation for Antasma, which looks like the death animation used after defeating him at the end of the game, with the exception that he is in his humanoid form in said animation, and not his bat form as seen here.

Dreamy Bowser#

Early	Final

Dreamy Bowser has two unused identical sprites showing an early design for the boss. The most notable difference is that instead of the Dream Stone on his stomach and forehead, a spiral is present instead.

Orb#

A crude drawing of an orb with a strange palette, presumably a placeholder or test graphic.

Jigsaw Puzzle#

Two test images for the jigsaw puzzles. The first one is the official artwork from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. The final jigsaw images all feature horizontal borders, as opposed to the test image's vertical borders.

Bowser's Inside Story Leftovers#

Various sprites from the previous Mario & Luigi title are present in the files of Dream Team.

Shroobs#

Shroobs

The Shroobs never make an appearance in Dream Team outside of a cameo on a photo in Kylie Koopa's office in Wakeport.

Blitties#

While Broque Monsieur, Broque Madame, and Broggy reappear in Dream Team, the Blitties sadly don't (which is strange seeing how the Brock species was officially revealed in this game).

Goombule#

May have been used as a reference during the creation of new enemy sprites.

Mario#

Mario

May have been used as a reference during the creation of new Mario sprites.

Luigi#

Luigi

May have been used as a reference during the creation of new Luigi sprites.

Unused Text#

The Guard Badge and Bronze Badge, which are given by the Dozing Sands badge shopkeeper, have description text. Badge descriptions can only be seen in shops, and these badges do not appear in the shop inventory afterward. Despite this, they do have proper text describing them. Unfortunately, the description entries for the Mush Badge and Starter Badge, badges which also never appear in a shop, are blank. This text can be found in Message\US_English\Item.msbt.

Grants protection from enemy attacks.
Recommended for novice defenders.

A practical badge at a fair price.
Delivers simple, useful effects.

Revisional Differences#

Version 1.1#

A downloadable update released on September 3, 2013. Along with adding a "Version 1.1" graphic to the top-left of the title screen, this update fixed several major bugs:

• In one segment of the first Mount Pajamaja tour, the Mario Bros. would have to spin jump into the Massif Bros. to clear fields of icicles obstructing their path. A major oversight in the original release was that if the player were to take certain actions during this point, they would inadvertently prevent themselves from progressing by leaving the required path obstructed.
• In the original release, the game had a tendency to freeze repeatedly at inconvenient times, especially in Somnom Woods and Neo Bowser Castle.
• In the original release, playtime on a file continued to be counted while the 3DS was closed or the game was suspended. v1.1 only counts playtime while the game is actively playing.
• In the original release, a bug was present that prevented Mario from defeating Antasma in Neo Bowser Castle. After his defeat, Antasma leaves behind a "rare drop" present; in v1.0, there was a chance that this present would never open, forcing the player to reset.
• In the original release, when fighting Antasma X in the Battle Ring, the game had a chance of freezing when Dreamy Luigi is freed from an Antasmunchie X.

Oddities#

Battle Ring#

When exiting the Battle Ring, shortly after Dreambert disappears, the bottom screen briefly flickers and Starlow's twinkle sound can be heard. It's likely just the game trying to play the cutscene which plays after defeating Grobot X for the first time in order to obtain the Zeekeeper's Feathers, before promptly stopping it after realizing that they already were collected and that there's no need to redo the cutscene, so the action stops midway, causing the screen flash and twinkle sound effect.

Glitched Frame#

One of the frames used in Bowser Jr's Hammer attack is "glitched". The fact that it's an in-between frame may explain why it wasn't noticed during playtesting.

Debug Menu#

The base game of the final US version of the game has a file called BootMenu.cro in the RO directory, that isn't referenced by the game in any way. It appears to have many debugging functions. Shortened terms are used and described in the table below. Any mention of the code used in this file is wiped from the CRS too, so therefore it cannot be accessed.