Persona 4 Golden

In Persona 4 Golden, Scoob Teddie and the gang gather clues and track down a serial killer in the small town of Inaba. This updated version added new Social Links, a new Dungeon, new difficulty settings, new Personas, a new Epilogue, and all sorts of other little tweaks and adjustments to the much-loved PS2 original.

The game also made a surprise rerelease on PC in 2020, and then it was eventually followed up by a rerelease to all current gen platforms in 2023, introducing the series to a new audience and allowing players to bask in those PS2-era graphics at 4k 60fps.

Unused TextYo, Protag. Did you plant corny jokes? 'Cuz you got maize for DAYS. Unused EventsThe Investigation Team didn't search for the truth in these places! Changes from the PS2 releaseGreat differences.

Unused Models#

A model of the Persona 3 protagonist can be found in the game still, internally named VIEW2. This is from Persona 3 Portable for the PSP, and comes with a full set of battle and dungeon animations.

A simple pyramid. There are two copies of it named light_test and editor. There's a duplicate of the editor model in a slightly different format. It features a wider base.

A generic placeholder cut-in portrait. This text is only seen upon rendering the model. There are multiple copies of this model.

A placeholder animation for Rise's cut-in portrait during an all out attack. The text that falls into place says (temp). The animation speed is estimated.

This flat model appears to resemble the pink outline used for Rise's portrait during an all out attack (seen on the right). The model is curiously placed among attack effect models.

Unused Graphics#

Placeholder & Test Graphics#

A battle related graphic that says "trash".

A test HUD that reads "12/24 金 放課後", which translates to "12/24 Friday After School".

A tiny Jack Frost image used for effect-related tests.

This is a small version of Izanagi, Yu Narukami's main persona. It's used as a placeholder for persona portraits.

A small and large placeholder tarot card that says "異邦人 (仮)", or "Stranger (Temp)".

An old-style piece of Rise artwork, used in the placeholder cut-in animation seen above.

A portrait of the gas station attendant. There is a censor bar over the eyes, and "(Dummy)" written on top.

A placeholder location image for Shichiri Beach. The text reads "Shichiri Beach Rain & Fog (Temp)". The background image here is identical to the road near the Samegawa Flood Plain.

A placeholder location image for Okina City. The text reads "Okina City mostly sunny (Temp)". This background image does not match any background used in the game.

Unused Save Icons#

The PlayStation Vita version for both Japanese and English have unused save icons for empty and saved file slots, but due to the way the PlayStation Vita stores saved data, it leads to them not being usable, or even viewable. The 2023 console ports ended up using different graphics for their saved data, leading to this still being unused to this day.

Cut-In Portraits#

The portraits in this section were found among some cut-in graphics for the navigator when exploring dungeons. The larger square ones may have been intended for non-dungeon scenes though.

Two cut-in portraits for Naoto. Naoto's chin in the second portrait appears to be modified to some extent.

A similar set of portraits for Rise. The squished portrait here has some splicing going on, which is most evident on Rise's cheeks.

Unused	Final

This third portrait of Rise features a lighter hair tone and lacks a gradient on her skin. It's also vertically squished in comparison to the final portrait.

Persona 3/Portable Leftovers#

A portrait for Yukari Takeba, along with a backing visual effect. This portrait was used in Persona 3, but cropped to some extent. There are multiple copies of these images.

A full size portrait for Yukari. Comes equipped with an over-saturated blinking frame.

An image of Orpheus, the Persona 3 protagonist's main persona. This is used as a placeholder for persona portraits.

An overlay effect used for testing. The version on the right is a restoration of what the image should look like. The original image found in the game files is broken due to an unintentional LF→CRLF/CR→CRLF conversion. The image in its broken state can be found in Atlus titles as far back as Persona 3 Portable.

Cut-in portraits for the male and female protagonists from Persona 3 Portable. There are vertically and horizontally cropped versions.

Close up cut-in portraits for various characters from Persona 3. In order, they are Kotone Shiomi, Koromaru, Shinjiro Aragaki, Takaya Sakaki, Jin Shirato, Chidori Yoshino, Elizabeth, Theodore, and Margaret.

Some cut-in backgrounds found alongside the Persona 3 cut-in portraits.

A portrait of the Dojima family, meant for a picture frame. This image uses a piece of Ryotaro Dojima's concept art.

Graphic Oddities#

Alpha	No Alpha

Portraits and a few other graphics feature a hidden layer of data where the alpha channel is set to zero. Therefore, it is only possible to see this extra data by ignoring all alpha channels (and subsequently losing transparency). Most portraits in Persona 4 Golden have a large portion at the bottom that is never seen in the game. This Yosuke portrait for example has some French text on the t-shirt that would have otherwise not been seen. The text on Yosuke's shirt appears to say "Tu voi(s) | Je suis fai(t)", which translates to "You see | I am made".

A set of sideways facing glasses are hidden on the alpha channel of every Rise navigation portrait.

These two textures are used for some hologram projections in the Secret Laboratory dungeon. These are actually excerpts from a French Huffington Post article about a Japanese agricultural minister who resigned.

The entire section of text below is used in the second texture. The text in the first texture is bold:

Tohru Adachi's police badge is not easily seen in-game. The texture uses a piece of Adachi's concept art for the portrait.

Unused Events#

Please elaborate. Having more detail is always a good thing.

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Are these events also present in the original Vita version's files? Also, the comments of the linked video indicate that there are more unused events besides these ones. Maybe find or record the events individually and move this to its own sub-page?

The PC version's files include data for an evening job at Junes, events at the beach and ski resort, and renting DVDs from the video rental store at Okina. The player would've been able to watch the DVDs at home to extract a skill card from their equipped Persona, a feature that is instead handled by visiting Chagall Cafe at Okina in the final game. The DVD rental concept would later appear in Persona 5, though in that game, they're used to boost social stats rather than for skill cards. Watch on YouTube

Music#

Unused Music#

Found only in the 32-bit version of the 2023 remaster, an early dummy loop found inside the files of the game, simply named "dummy" internally. The loop was used as a placeholder in multiple areas of the game during development of the original game, and was almost used in the final release, but was ultimately scrapped by Hashino, knowing that Meguro composed it in only 14 minutes.

Music Differences#

Prior to the 64-bit update in January 2023, the Steam version of Persona 4 Golden used a different file structure, where assets were stored in .pac files and were referenced by language-specific .cpk files. Sound banks were omitted from this structure, and were stored in a folder in the root of the game directory called SND, rather than inside of a sound folder in the data.cpk file (as is the structure of other Persona games).

The banks used .xsb/.xwb formats linked to the DirectX SDK, storing tracks in Microsoft's ADPCM codec. These were replaced with Criware .acb/.awb sound banks following the update, similar to the ones used in the original Vita version, though swapping out the Vita's AT9 codec for Criware HCA.

The 32-bit version of the game is the only version to include two additional songs that are never used in the game, as well as the unused alternate version of Girl of the Hollow Forest that is present in both the 64-bit PC and Vita version. This version also has a distinct different in internal IDs for the BGM files:

Regional Differences#

Voice Actor Interviews#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: With the later PC and 8th/9th gen versions having dual audio, were these interviews restored in those versions? If not, are the unused models still found in the game data in those versions?

Watch on YouTube

The Japanese and Korean versions of the game feature interviews with twelve Japanese voice actors for the main characters. These are found in the TV Listings menu and are unlocked by maxing out the Social Links with the characters. This bonus feature was not redone for the English version of the game, most likely because the English voice actors are uncredited due to union issues. As a result, this feature was cut out entirely for the localized version of the game, though the models used for the Japanese voice actors interviews remain in the game data. The models and their associated character and (actor) names can be seen below.

Yu Narukami (Daisuke Namikawa)	Yosuke Hanamura (Shotaro Morikubo)	Chie Satonaka (Yui Horie)

Yukiko Amagi (Ami Koshimizu)	Kanji Tatsumi (Tomokazu Seki)	Teddie (Kappei Yamaguchi)

Rise Kujikawa (Rie Kugimiya)	Naoto Shirogane (Romi Park)	Tohru Adachi (Mitsuaki Madono)

Ryotaro Dojima (Unsho Ishizuka)	Nanako Dojima (Akemi Kanda)	Marie (Kana Hanazawa)

Revisional Differences#

There were a few changes made for when the game was released for PC, with the changes being carried over to the following rereleases, which adds a few more with those changes being applied to the PC version.

Changes for the PC version:

• The Sunny graphic was altered to unintentionally look less like the Rising Sun, much like a similar change in Persona 5.
• Two bonus features in the TV Listings that was in the original Vita version, being YBC and Jacktoons, have been removed completely with them having "Broadcast has ended" in their place.
• The game now runs at 4k 60fps.
• Japanese voice audio is now selectable from the main menu.
• The game more frequently asks if you would like to save your progress thus far after major story events.

Changes for the Nintendo Switch/PS4/Xbox One/Xbox Series X versions:

• More text language options have been added, which is French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Simplified Chinese.
• You can now Quick Save by going to the pause menu and going to the system setting.
• An album feature has been added which allows you to rewatch social link events as memories in the sofa in the bedroom.
• The 32-bit versions are no longer playable for the PC version, unless downloaded using Steam's terminal.
• Minor bugs have been fixed.

Oddities#

• If the player loads one of the roads used in scooter cutscenes in the 2023 remasters, the field name displays a long, cut off line in Spanish.
• Loading Mr. Edogawa's classroom as a playable field often causes the game to hard crash, closing entirely without warning.