Parasite Eve II

Unused BackgroundsThe game developers left out a lot of background images. Some complete and some... not quite.

Daytime Rooms#

All the day versions of the locked rooms are (normally) inaccessible. You are not supposed to get a key for them until after dark, though it is possible to use cheats/hacks to obtain one and get early access to the rooms.

• All of the rooms can be entered and exited.
• All of the rooms use a daytime version of pre-rendered backgrounds, though one room has incomplete visuals (Motel room 5).
• They all have some form of basic path structure, allowing Aya to move around the room.
• None of the rooms are named. The game's internal data includes a set of room names with each area. Given Dryfield, daytime is Area 2 and Dryfield, nighttime is Area 3, they have 2 separate sets of names, despite the overlap.

Room 3#

The day and night versions of this room have some different angles used for the bedrooms. A green door is pretty visible here. There is no layer separation here, so it is easy to walk on top of beds and through walls.

Room 4#

As with Room 3, there is no layer separation. The bed light is in a different position and a lamp is added to the desk for the night version.

Room 5#

The least complete of all the inaccessible areas. Not only does this lack anything besides simple shapes, but there is also a model representing the exit/entrance. The lighting in the room is poor. Most of the time, Aya appears as a black blob on the screen with a shadow underneath.

Motel Loft#

Bizarrely, the door exit trigger is not at the door, but near the left side of the laundry cage. The Jerry Can can be picked up here in nearly any spot in the room and counts towards triggering the Zebra Stalkers crashing through the glass ceiling, though this will not happen until Aya enters the room at night.

Motel Lobby#

This area cannot be accessed from the game map; it will crash the game. Most of the flavor text was included, except for the register puzzle. Saving in this room results in a save file which leaves the player trapped in a loading screen with nothing to do but read some flavor text.

Unused Items#

Unknown Weapon, Item #133
The weapon looks like a P229 without the silencer and flashlight. It is possible the silencer and flashlight were intended to be add-ons, much like the Snail Magazine for the P08. It has no attached ammunition, stats or attacks, making it ineffective in combat. It uses the P229's reload animation if you manage to win a battle while it is equipped.

44 Poison, Item #168
Only the Mongoose can equip this ammo. This has the same critical rate as the 44 Magnum / 44 Maeda SP ammo and shares the 44 Maeda SP's unique properties (Poisons targets, knocks No.9 back, etc.).

Paralizer (sic), Item #175
The M4A1 (With any attachments) and the M249 can use this. It has the same critical rate as 5.56 Rifle Ammo. While not in the specifications, the Paralizer does inflict PARALYSIS on a single target.

Flashbomb, Item #176
The M4A1 (with any attachments) and the M249 can use this. This tends to knock down targets, but many are immune to its effect.

Clipboard, Item #200

Agent Baldwin always carries this.

In a way this item is used since it is handed to Aya in a cutscene, but what appears in your KEY ITEM page is all the stuff that was attached to the clipboard, not the item itself.

Going unused are items 51-53, which have the letter R for their picture, and item 230 which has the letter Z. Both the Japanese and North American versions use this, though the R is in different positions.

Unused Icons#

Unknown Status Effect
Aya has eight status effects, six are used in the game. The effects are: Blindness, Paralysis, Poison, Unknown, Silence, Unknown, Confusion and Berserk.

• #4 appears to be an empty effect that turns Aya's HUD red, but does not appear to have any effect on the player's HP/movement/abilities.
• #6 behaves like #3, but it also attaches a status icon underneath the HUD. This one could be related to the IMPACT effect.

Tonfa Equipment
There is a unique icon for the Tonfa that remains unused. The palette for this icon is unknown, but it is possible the grey icon palette would have been used, given that Tonfa's final icon is a grey gun.

Unused Inventory Slots#

Parasite Eve II has 256 slots available for inventory. Aya normally only uses 120 of them:

#0-19 - Personal equipment
#20-29 - Shooting Gallery 
#50-79 - Aya's Sedan
#80-89 - Bronco Rm. 6
#90-109 - Mine Entrance Truck
#130-149 - Sterilization Room
#160-169 - Laboratory

The other 136 slots remain unused. Slot #s 30, 31, 40 and 41 have a Recovery1 and Slot #32 has a Stim. They remain unavailable during the game and are removed from your inventory when the player starts their trip to Dryfield.

Unused Enemy Encounters#

Several rooms in all areas of the game contain unused combat data. These can be accessed through memory editing, but are never enabled within the game. Many of the enemy compositions are similar to enabled encounters, but their layouts will be different and never include any item drops.

Dryfield, Nighttime has no unused encounters.

Placeholder Text#

Inside SLUS_010.42 at 0x57B00 is the string "Where am I?", which is set for a handful of rooms, but never displayed in them. This was likely a piece of placeholder text before the name was entered into the game. It's also not located with the regular resource files.

Unused Text#

In the inventory commentary, two lines are not used when handling inventory:

I don't no how to use this.
AS12 required.

"I don't no" is spelled incorrect and the AS12 does not have any attachments.

Unused Graphics#

Parasite Eve 2 uses their version of a GPS system to show areas the player has explored. On some occasions, the player can access a map of the area and fill it in with areas which have yet to be explored (They will appear dark). However, some rooms cannot appear dark since the player must explore certain areas before they can update the whole map.

The game engine handles which areas are explored by adjusting multiple address values. A single address value (per map) handles all the unexplored areas. It appears the game engine first checks the single address, then replaces unexplored areas with explored ones where appropriate.

Below is a list of rooms that will never appear dark during normal game play:

Unused Video#

On both discs, there is a really odd video of sorts. Its file name is DUMMY.DMY and is physically at the end of both of the discs. It's very primitive visually and appears to be a DOGA animation contest entry. It also plays twice.

Regional Differences#

Changes made from JP to NA Version:

• Some changes were made in the naming of the two hardest difficulty modes in the game: Supportless and Deadly became Scavenger and Nightmare.
• The selection page saw a change from stars to circles marking the difficulty level plus changing SICKNESS to SICK in the CONDITION category.
• The Supportless page was re-labeled, image quality was reduced slightly, edges appear sharper, Aya's head was made a little wider and a 'touch' more of the source image can be seen along the bottom (You can see a little more of Aya's foot).
• The Deadly page was re-labeled, image quality was reduced slightly, edges appear sharper, and tint is slightly less red.

Japan	North America

The JP version of 1st-level Recovery is misspelled "Pain Reliver" and is smaller in size than the NA version.

Japan	North America

The JP version used a bottle of Perrier, rather than a generic carbonated water bottle like the NA version uses.

Japan	North America

The JP version uses a full-blown medkit with a syringe and two bottles. The NA version loses the case and syringe. This may account for (In the NA version) the item being called a Medkit when it has not yet been identified as Penicillin.

Japan	North America

The JP version of purchasable spells all use the same inventory image, which happens to look like the Medkit image, but with different colored labels. The NA version uses color-coded vials to indicate what element the spell is.

References#