Oddities

This is a sub-page of Mother 3.

Room Warp Oddity#

If you access a hidden warp in Club Titiboo that's in the far left of the lobby, you'll be warped outside of Alec's house. The palette will be different to create a sunset effect, and your inventory will be replaced with a new one containing some unused items.

Graphical Layer Oddities#

While these maps are used, certain tiles are not visible due to other layers blocking them.

Naming Screen

Seen	One Layer

A few mountains in the background, some foliage, and most of the sheep pen are obscured by the text boxes. The right side of the pen's roof doesn't have an outline.

Chapter One Intro Scene

Seen	Removed Layer

Most of the Forest Prayer Sanctuary is obscured by a hill with trees, as well as the stone "bed" near it.

Osohe Castle Sanctuary

Seen	One Layer

The far ends of the castle walls and some flowers are obscured by the foreground balcony.

Hidden Area Details#

The final boss room has some areas on the very top which are never seen during normal gameplay.

The room used for Mixolydia's Needle has the Pigmask mothership stored outside of the player's view. Normally, during gameplay, only a small section of it is shown.

There is a locked room in the Toilet Dungeon, in Chapter 8, which has water leaking from under its door. It is never accessible during normal gameplay, and the door is non-functional, but if you use a walk-through-walls code in the next room, you can access the flooded room. There are no NPCs inside, and no solidity is programmed.

There is also a room in another corridor that becomes inaccessible when a man rushes in and prevents you from entering. Walking through the walls here reveals that it is filled with toilet paper.

Evidence of Overwritten Sprite Groups#

There's evidence that some sprite groups were overwritten at certain points in development. Much of this comes from the game's speaker list, as the IDs of most of the entries in the list up until entry B9 match the IDs of the sprite groups they are associated with. Below is a list of inconsistencies that indicate overwritten sprite groups:

Sprite Group 46

Contains Boney's Sunflower Field sprites, but speaker entry 46 is "Flint". The sprite group seems to have been sloppily copied and pasted from Boney's normal sprite group, leaving duplicates of Boney's normal sprites unused in the group, indicating that Boney in the Sunflower Field was a late change in development. These suggest that this sprite group originally contained one for Flint, and since Lucas's Sunflower Field sprites are located right after this one, they were likely for Flint being in the Sunflower Field. This would actually match up with the N64 version: The Spaceworld 1999 trailer shows Lucas holding onto Flint when he grabs onto the airship, meaning they probably would have fallen into the Sunflower Field together since Boney holds onto Lucas in the final game.

Sprite Group 7A

Contains Boney's hot spring sprites for having a hat on, but speaker entry 7A is "Locria". The six entries before this in both tables are the other Magypsies, so group 7A likely originally contained Locria's sprites. Along with certain unused dialogue, this suggests an earlier draft of the story where Locria was a regular Magypsy and a separate character from Fassad.

Sprite Group 7D

Contains a girl NPC. While there's nothing odd about Sprite Bank 0, Bank 1 contains sprites for an early design of the Porky-bot. This suggests the group originally contained sprites for the early Porky-bot.

Sprite Group A2

Contains the Refrigerator the party uses to leave Snowcap Mountain, but speaker entry A2 is "Mole Cricket". This is the only evidence of the sprite group being overwritten.

Sprite Group 99

Contains Lucas's pajama sprites, but speaker entry 99 is "Explorer". Additionally, there's an unused shopkeeper in Gova Volcano called Loner the Explorer that uses this sprite group. This suggests that group 99 originally contained the Explorer's sprites.

Party Member Oddities#

Default Names#

Despite each character only having one default name on the name entry screens, the table that contains their default names actually has seven for each character, just like in EarthBound. However, each name is just a duplicate of the first one, and only the first one is loaded when selecting Don't Care.

Equipment#

Flint can equip many items that can only be obtained after Chapter 1, a leftover from when he was meant to join the party in later chapters:

• All of Lucas's weapons except the Fake Bat and Real Bat
• The DCMC Pamphlet
• The Handy Yo-Yo
• All of the bracelets obtainable after Chapter 1, except for the Gemini Bracelet (which only Lucas can equip) and the Virgo Bracelet (which only Kumatora can equip).
• All of the charms obtainable after Chapter 1
• The Kid's Shirt
• The DCMC Shirt
• The Rubber Cape
• The Aloha Coat
• The Knit Sweater
• The Warm Sweater

Salsa can also equip some items that he can normally never obtain:

• The Manly Bandana
• The Bear Hat
• The Otter Hat
• The Red Hat
• The Crow Bandana
• The Kite Bandana
• The Cancer Bracelet
• The Scorpio Bracelet
• The Pumice Charm
• The Bantam Charm
• The Heavy Charm
• The Thud Charm

There are unused sprites of Salsa walking to the fridge on Snowcap Mountain, so perhaps he was supposed to be in the party for a longer period during development and be able to obtain some of these items.

Lucas can equip the Stick, which can only be obtained as Flint. This could possibly be a leftover from when Flint was supposed to join the party in later chapters.

Duster can equip the Manly Bandana, which can only be obtained from Lighter as Flint in Chapter 1. Once again, this is likely a leftover from Flint's larger role.

Lucas and Salsa can equip the Ordinary Hat, which Flint wears in Chapter 1. This isn't technically unused: if you give the hat to Boney in Chapter 1, he'll still have it in Chapter 4. Additionally, if someone has it when Salsa joins the party in Chapter 7, it can be given to him then. However, most players would never do this.

Other Oddities#

There's a single line of Game Logic for the cutscene before the final boss that checks if Salsa is in the party or not, but bringing Salsa to the cutscene via the debug room doesn't seem to have any effect on the scene. The scene doesn't check for any other party members that aren't there normally.

Enemy Oddities#

All enemies in the games have stats for the unused Kindness stat, which are four bytes rather than one byte like their other stats. They're all set to 0, and changing the stat seems to have no effect.

Hardcoded Data#

Some enemies, for some odd reason, have some of their battle data hardcoded, and changing their data through hacking doesn't do anything. Here's a list of currently-known enemies with hardcoded data:

• The Masked Man (Enemy 0D) has his battle actions hardcoded.
• All the Porky-bots (Enemies 13, 1A, 1B, 2E, 91, A9, B4, B5, BB, and BC) seem to have their battle actions hardcoded, as their battle action tables are actually completely empty.
• Miracle Fassad (Enemy 1C) has his weakness text hardcoded.
• The Minor Robot (Enemy 83) has its battle actions hardcoded.

The Masked Man#

In the Masked Man's first fight, one of his eight actions is action 1C2, "burst into laughter!", but he's programmed to never use it.

He also has unique stats for being approached from behind, which is normally impossible:

• Offense: 10 (normally 165)
• Defense 110 (normally 120)
• IQ: 64 (same as normal)
• Speed: 1 (normally 43)

Porky-bots#

All of the Porky-bots have stats for being approached from behind, and they're all set to 1.

Porky#

Porky has unique stats for being approached from behind, which is normally impossible:

• Offense: 1 (normally 170)
• Defense: 148 (normally 182)
• IQ: 64 (same as normal)
• Speed: 63 (same as normal)

He does technically "turn around" in battle to use the dead spider mech sprite, but he can never attack or be attacked in this state.

Empty Objects with Palettes#

Some objects from 0x2D7 onwards actually have palettes assigned to them that aren't the default 0, despite the objects being completely empty and unused.

Inconsistent Flint Animation#

Flint's animation for getting up after waking up in the Tazmily Jail and getting up after a game over are supposed to be the same, but upon closer inspection, they are noticeably different. The jail one seems to be an earlier version that lacks detail, has his body drawn differently, and is missing a frame.

Since these animations are in separate graphic banks, it's likely that the developers improved the game over animation and either forgot to change the other one to match or didn't bother because the jail animation is obscured by the jail cell's bars.

Jail Animation
Game Over Animation

Battle Memory Can't Be Read#

If the player enters the Debug Room during the Prologue (before they have even fought any enemies, since the Mole Cricket is counted) and later obtains the Battle Memory in Osohe Castle (during Chapter 2, preferably), the game will actually lock out the player from "reading" it, playing the sound effect for when something can't be obtained, used, or given to another party member in the inventory. This is never seen in normal gameplay, of course, as by the time it is obtained, the player would have fought many enemies from Chapters 1 and 2, which are normally saved. Defeating (or, at least, encountering) any enemy makes it work as normal, however.