Unused Graphics

This is a sub-page of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team.

To do: There are many unused special characters for the dialogue font. List and rip them. There are also Japanese characters still present in the US and EUR version; rip them and explain why their colors are glitched if forced to appear in non-Japanese versions.

Visible#

The following graphics are either loaded in VRAM while the game is running, or can be accessed in-game through cheats.

Japanese Freehand Writing (European Red Rescue Team)#

Some freehand Japanese writing and cross marks are loaded in VRAM when displaying the European language-selection screen. These are the first-row characters of the Hiragana gojūon.

Title Background (US Red Rescue Team)#

Full Title Screen	Title Background

The lower section of the US-exclusive title background remains unseen.

Unused Portraits#

Since Meowth, Psyduck, Machop, Cubone, Eevee, and Skitty cannot be selected as the partner, certain portraits (and animations) have been left unused and cannot be displayed normally without the use of partner modifier codes. Despite not being used in the games themselves, the Japanese Official Guidebook for the games still showcases the portraits listed here in the hero/partner summaries. The Pokémon in question would eventually be made available as the partner in the remake, Rescue Team DX.

Meowth and Skitty's original "angry" and "teary-eyed" portraits would eventually see use in Explorers of Time and Darkness, while their other portraits and all of Eevee's would finally be used in Explorers of Sky. Notably, all of Eevee's portraits would receive a palette overhaul, and its "laughing" portrait would be completely redrawn.

There is also a placeholder portrait found in Skarmory's data. The Japanese text is Skarmory's Japanese name, エアームド Eamudo, but the "a" is spelled with the kanji 阿 for some reason. A letter "B" is lower down in the graphic.

Meowth

Psyduck

Machop

Cubone

Eevee

Skitty

Skarmory

In addition, there is a duplicate of Rayquaza's portrait in the files, stored separately from the used one.

Unused Dungeon Tilesets#

This game includes several dungeon tilesets that are not used during regular gameplay. Three would eventually be used in the next installment in the series, Explorers of Time and Darkness.

Tileset 0x01		A unique tileset reminiscent of Pitfall Valley's tileset. Used on the first floor of an unused dungeon, Autopilot. It would eventually be used for Tiny Meadow in Explorers.
Tileset 0x08		This tileset is used only in Blue Rescue Team in the Makuhita Dojo's Rescue Team Maze, and only after receiving a team from a Red Rescue Team cartridge through a DS system's dual-slot mode. This maze and its accompanying tileset still exist in the GBA version's data, but are inaccessible.
Tileset 0x14		A partially unique, partially palette-swapped variant of Purity Forest's 4F-7F tileset. It would eventually be used for Final Maze B23F in Explorers.
Tileset 0x16		A palette swap of Waterfall Pond's tileset. This tileset is included in Explorers, but remains unused.
Tileset 0x1A		An unused forest tileset (a palette swap of 0x14) that's used on the third floor of an unused dungeon, Boss 3. It would eventually be used for Lush Prairie in Explorers.

Unused Dungeon Tiles#

Some dungeons have alternative ground and wall tiles that are never used:

HUD Font#

Basic HUD characters, many of which were used in the prototype's various debug menus.

Note that this image doesn't include the whole set of characters, as some are actually used and thus were removed manually in order to not show them here.

Item Sprite#

This sprite is loaded in VRAM after entering a dungeon, along with all the other item sprites. In the image above, it is represented using all 13 item sprite palettes. These sprites look like gears.

"FOR HP" Indicator#

This sprite is loaded in VRAM after entering a dungeon, but it is replaced during gameplay by the HP damage/cure amount or the "MISS" notice. It was presumably intended to indicate a placeholder during development.

Shadow-On-Water Animations#

Unused	Used

These animations are loaded in VRAM after entering a dungeon, along with all the other Pokémon shadows. There are three sizes of shadow in the game, but when standing on water, only the big ones are used regardless of the size of the respective shadow when on the ground. Also, these seem to be early designs when compared to the used ones.

Unused Icy Wind Sprites#

To do: Verify this using Rescue Team's animation data alone and replace the loose sprites with a proper GIF of this animation. Since the animation data in Explorers is an unused leftover from Rescue Team, it is very unlikely to exhibit any differences.

These sprites are loaded into VRAM upon using the Icy Wind move, but remain unused. While the animation cannot be seen in Rescue Team, including in the prototype's animation viewer, animation data from Explorers of Time and Darkness (where they are similarly unused) reveals that the scrapped animation is modeled after the move's hit animation in the Generation III mainline games.

Found Only in ROM#

The following graphics are present only in the ROM, with no currently documented method to display them in-game; some may be represented using incorrect palettes as a result.

To do: Find out the correct palattes using GameShark or reverse engineering.

Alternative HUD Font#

Japan	US/Australia/Europe/South Korea

These HUD characters are found right after the ones loaded in VRAM. In the US, Australian, European, and Korean versions, all the Japanese characters have a different background color and don't have anti-aliasing. The Japanese variant of this font was used in the debug menu for dungeons in the debug-enabled build. The kanji characters are unavailable even in the aforementioned build, but the dummied-out KANJI FONT option may refer to them.

Story Progress Badges#

These four sprites are found right after the other Legendary Pokémon mini-portraits, which indicates the progress of the game story when loading the save.

Japanese Writing (Red Rescue Team)#

This Japanese writing is found right after the item sprites in Red Rescue Team. It says "around this area".

Numbered Tags#

These graphics are found after the above writing in Red Rescue Team, and after the item sprites in Blue Rescue Team.

Unused Text Icon#

There are many text icons in the dialogue text font, but this one is completely unused. Also, it is unclear what it was meant to represent.

Unused Floor Screen Characters#

To do: List unused characters for Japanese version.

These are the unused characters for the screen showed when entering a dungeon floor. Interestingly, there is no lowercase "q".

Hermie Hopperhead Penguin (Blue Rescue Team)#

Found in sample.sbin inside Blue Rescue Team's files is what seems to be of art of a penguin from the extremely obscure PlayStation game Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic. The game was not only developed by a completely different company (specifically Yuke's before they would develop wrestling games) but does not appear to share any staff with Red and Blue Rescue Team, making this inclusion rather puzzling.