No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

To do: Regional differences, including censored violence in the JP release and a different remix for the song "Philistine" in the EU release.

Before you start your Desperate Struggling, you should drop a nice save.

Explorable Santa Destroy#

Watch on YouTubeSanta Destroy was once meant to be explorable like the first game, but traveling would be via a menu in the final game, although some part of the city can still be seen when doing Side Jobs, Revenge Missions and even in the credits.

The file name is stg7000.bin and is the same map as the final release, it is actually well detailed like stores can be entered in and out by pushing their doors, tree and Street lights can be damaged with the Beam Katana's and the ground produces different sounds when Travis walks over it.

Unused Stages#

stg0000.bin is a school building that reuses some parts / assets from the 8th ranked assassin stage in the first No More Heroes game. Watch on YouTube

stg0002.bin is a beta Helter Skelter (without him) stage, much of the buildings/ billboards in the background appear only here. stg0100.bin is identical but has Helter Skelter.

stg0003.bin is the No More Heroes motel, separated from the rest of Santa Destroy.

stg0004.bin is the No More Heroes motel with an outside area that leads into more of Santa Destroy (albeit still a very small part), and has teleports to stg0100.bin.

stg0005.bin, stg0007.bin, stg0012.bin, and stg0013.bin are debug rooms, each with a variation of enemies.

stg0006.bin loads immediately into the cutscene before the 4th ranked assassin stage and then warps to the Area51 clothing store.

stg0008.bin is a beta New Destroyman (with him in it) boss stage.

stg0010.bin and stg0011.bin are sound test stages for footsteps on different floors.

stg0205.bin is a beta version of the second 50th ranked assassin stage, with the only noticeable difference being that the first room has a door that can only be opened once all enemies in the room are killed (as opposed to the open hallway leading into the next room in the final version), and that there are much more enemies in the first room. Appears in IGN pre-release gameplay footage.

stg0206.bin is a beta version of the 50th ranked assassin fight, albeit there is no perceivable difference between this and the final version (which is about 900KB larger). Appears in IGN pre-release gameplay footage.

stg0401.bin is a completely unused stage that would have appeared in between Kimmy Howell's stage and boss fight. It appeared in a trailer for No More Heroes 2, however.

stg0009.bin and potentially stg1514.bin are unused but there is no known way to access them as of yet.

Unused Cutscene#

A cutscene intended for the Charlie MacDonald boss battle goes totally unused - it features Charlie and his entourage of cheerleaders pumping themselves up while inside the Santa Death Parade, with the (otherwise unused) "boss level start" fanfare from the previous game accompanying it.

According to a leaked script found on NeoGAF, the following dialogue, also unused, corresponds to this cutscene: Watch on YouTube

Teamwork is our offense. 
Unity is our game.
Humanity is our defense.
Formation is our fame.

Dummy Audio Files#

Present in Sound are three blank audio files called _dammy_music.brstm, dammy.brstm, and dammy.0.brstm.

Pre-Spliced Cutscenes#

In Movie, the files mvus004.thp and mvus006.thp are parts of mvus003.thp, which is the cutscene before the Charlie MacDonald fight.

Similarly, mvjp005.thp and mvus005.thp are part of mvus003.thp, the opening company credits.