Unused Scenes

This is a sub-page of New Super Mario Bros..

Scenes are glorified actors in New Super Mario Bros., which set up graphics and/or spawn other actors. For instance, the World Map scene (Scene 9) puts the Nintendo DS top screen into a 3D mode, then spawns Mario, the wandering blocks/enemies, and then the world map model itself. By switching a scene you can get to any part of the game from any part of the game. Several of them are early and mostly dummied out.

"WORLD" - Early World Select Menu (Actor 8)#

Watch on YouTubeIt's hard to say whether this was a debugging menu, or if they intended this to be actually accessible by the player.

This actor loads eight unused world icons and displays them in a circle. Pressing Left and Right rotates the circle around, letting you select a world. Pressing A takes you to that world. By pressing Y or X the icons will zoom in and out, respectively, but only if L or R is also held. Pressing both START and SELECT returns you to the debug menu.

This bears a slight resemblance to the World Select menu that eventually made its way into New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Early World Icons#

The icons themselves are located in the folder for world map models "map", unlike the final ones, which are in the 2D UI elements folder "uiStudio". They depict early versions of the game's eight worlds with a bird's-eye view of the terrain. The icons for Worlds 1 and 4 are the most detailed, while Worlds 5-7 are rather vague.

World 1 - "kinoko" (mushroom)
Features a variety of terrain, with a mixture of grassy and sandy areas, as well as a long and straight brown feature that is either a cliff or road of some kind. The coloring of the icon is also considerably more realistic than the bright greens and oranges used in the final version. This is consistent with pre-release footage of the game.

World 2 - "desert"
Shows a single, large oasis and no ocean in sight.

World 3 - "water"
Shows a small tropical island, but mainly focuses on the ocean.

World 4 - "ancient"
Labeled as an "ancient" world and features a volcanic island with distinct land formations. This type of setting is usually associated with prehistoric times and/or dinosaurs, which is likely what the theme of the world was meant to be, rather than the poisonous forest it became, although arguably the final world could be labelled "ancient" without any changes being needed. The volcano levels shown in the November 2005 screenshots may depict this world.

World 5 - "ice"
Shown as a large white land mass with some white islands around it, indicating that the ocean might have played a larger part of the world's design.

World 6 - "machine"
Named a "machine" world, and the icon itself is a metallic ball rather than a map. It's not clear if this is just a placeholder or if it's meant to represent the physical appearance of something in the world. In the final game, World 6 is a mountain-themed world. The closest thing to this theme in a previous 2D Mario game is the Mario Zone from Super Mario Land 2, which is set inside a large machine.

There are few things that may be a leftover of this early design, although like World 4, the presence of these elements could arguably be evidence that the "machine" label still applies to the final world design:

• The world features many Bullet Bills.
• There is a tank as the end-of-world boss.
• There are two towers (which could be compared to "factory" levels due to being indoor levels with "mechanism" obstacles, although many towers/castles in the game could fit that criteria.)
• There is reuse of many level themes and mechanics from previous worlds, and the fact it only has three strictly mountain themed levels. This suggests the world may have been rushed after the machine theme was scrapped. There is even the possibility that the few mountain themed levels were taken from early World 4 or World 8 - the internal name of the mountain tileset implies it was originally created for "volcanic mountain" levels.
• This is just speculation, but the "pipes" theme used in World 7-A could possibly be a leftover from a machine theme. Although its internal name "dokansoto" (pipes outside) doesn't seem to support that.

World 7 - "sky"
Represented as a large swirling of wispy white clouds above the ocean.

World 8 - "koppa" (Bowser)
Shows dark islands in a sea of lava, though the most notable features are the castle with three lit windows and a dark sphere with a glowing face reminiscent of Bowser's Koopa Clown Car. Given that the icons take a more realistic approach to world design, it is possible that this face was really meant to be the size of a castle, like in Paper Mario, instead of a symbolic reference to Bowser's presence. Note that the Koopa Clown Car doesn't appear anywhere in the game. The volcano levels shown in the November 2005 screenshots may depict this world.

Interestingly, the music for World 5, 4, and 6 (respectively, in that order) are the last in the sound data file, suggesting their themes may have been the last in development. In addition, these worlds, plus World 8, are the only ones not to have unique music for their standard levels themes, possibly further implying their themes were finalized later in development.

Scene Load Debug Menu (Actor 2)#

The entirety of Overlay 2 consists of an unused Scene Actor, which looks to be a dummied-out Debug Menu. Upon loading, it checks which levels are defined as valid by the game, then gets the number of Area said levels begin in. It then proceeds to load your savefile and checks whether the player has acquired checkpoints in them.

The actor then goes to its OnCreate/OnExecute/OnDraw functions, but those have been removed entirely and simply return 1.

There is, however, one more bit of code, which feeds some data from later on in the overlay to a function the game normally uses to change the current scene. Alongside that data are labels which would, presumably, be entries on a menu. By feeding this data to said scene-change function, we can find out what this menu would do:

• KINOK - Loads World 1 on starting node.
  
• KINO2 - Loads World 1 on 1-1's node.
  
• KINO3 - Loads World 2 on starting node.
  
• WORLD - Loads the unused World Select scene.
  
• SAVE - Loads the unused Save load/erase scene.
  
• TITLE - Loads the title screen.
  
• ENDIN - Loads the ending.
  
• CRSIN - Loads the level-load screen.
  
• GOVER - Loads the Game Over scene.
  
• KEY - Loads unused Scene 11.
  
• SOUND - Loads unused Sound Effect test scene.
  
• ENTRY - Loads the Mario vs Luigi opponent select menu.
  
• ERROR - Loads the "Save File Corrupted" scene.
  
• MGVS - Loads the Minigames menu.
  

"SAVE" - Save Operations Menu (Actor 7)#

Watch on YouTubeThis would be accessed from the above debug menu scene. Unlike it, however, most of its code remains intact; it sets up graphics modes during OnCreate, reads input during OnExecute, and properly functions based on said input. The only thing missing is the OnDraw, meaning it simply stays a blank screen.

The menu can load save files 1-3 and also erase all data. The erasing function is broken, however, because it creates a malformed save file and causes a "Corrupted options data" error the next time you start the game. Perhaps the savefile format changed since this menu was dummied out.

By pressing both START and SELECT you would return to the debug menu.

On the right, you can see this menu, with a recreated OnDraw function.

"SOUND" - SFX Test Menu (Actor 16)#

Watch on YouTubeAlso accessible from Scene 2, and is missing the OnDraw function just like the Save Menu.

By pressing Left and Right, one can choose a Sound Set to load and a Sound Effect to play, which is done by pressing the A button. Pressing both START and SELECT would return you to the debug menu.

On the right, you can see this menu, with a recreated OnDraw function.

"KEY" - Input Test? (Actor 17)#

Also accessible from Scene 2, and is missing the OnDraw function again.

Hard to say what this would do; it doesn't seem to show anything visible. Going by the Debug Menu name, it can be assumed that it would test Player input. Pressing both START and SELECT still returns you to the debug menu.

Minigame Debug Menu (Actor 329)#

Watch on YouTubeNot accessible from the general debug menu, this requires spawning its actor after the game has switched to the Minigame Mode.

Lets you enter all the different Minigame modes. This menu didn't get its draw function deleted, so shown is exactly how it would have appeared.

Minigame Debug Menu 2 (Actor 338)#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Can we open this menu while Download Play is enabled?

This debug menu is similar to the above however it allows selecting a vs level to play.

You can access this debug menu by using the action replay code 02024be4 00000149 and selecting the Minigames option on the title screen.

Selecting a option in this menu will crash back to the main menu due to it expecting Download Play to be active.

Options#