The Sims 2 (Nintendo DS)

Development Info Prerelease Info Bugs

Unused NPC Content#

Alien#

In the Sims 2, all named non-clerk NPCs occupy slots, and in NPC slot 0 is an unused version of Burple, named simply as "Alien" in-game. It uses an earlier render of the character as well. In the final, Burple is just one of Xizzle's henchman that appears during alien invasion events, and can't be interacted with much outside getting zapped and abducted.

Early	Final

When you force the game to spawn him, his scripting appears to be broken, making him do nothing and stand completely still. Attempting to interact will softlock the bottom screen until you exit the room.

Oddly, he has a full profile page for the friends menu, for whatever reason. It suggests this alien may have been sort of similar to Emperor Xizzle, where they are important enough to be named and listed, but not as unimportant as the clerks at the different places around town, but it's more likely he was used for testing the NPC system, since he occupies slot 0.

Like most NPCs, he also has a secret, but unlike others, this NPC only has the profile menu text for it. Secrets are typically unlocked through playing the Social Interaction mini-games with the NPC in question. This is something you cannot do with Alien NPCs, which makes the presence of a secret here rather questionable.

Emperor Xizzle#

In NPC slot 01 is Emperor Xizzle. While this character is used at a few points during the story and during Alien Invasions, Xizzle also has a full profile in the profiles menu like other NPCs. What's interesting here is that he also has a secret, but only the profile menu text for it. Secrets are typically unlocked through playing the Social Interaction mini-games with the NPC in question. This is something you cannot do with Alien NPCs, which makes the presence of a secret here rather questionable.

Honest Jackson#

Due to a confirmed scripting bug, Honest Jackson disappears from the game at the arrival of the second antagonist of the game, Ava Cadavra. One of the missions during her arc involves asking the town residents if they know about a Branding Iron. Because Honest is always gone by this point due to that bug, this text is impossible to see unless the bug is fixed.

Unused Objects, Models, and Animations#

Sims 2 DS is full of random unused odds and ends, and all of it overlaps with other 'stuff', like, some objects are used but have unused animations, some have unused graphics associated with them, etc. It's annoying to document in other words.

Unused ObjectsThere's so much crap, we needed a giant obnoxious table. It's still around, but now just the juicy stuff is on the main page.

Unused Arcade Machines#

The most major discovery in the game is perhaps these two fully functional arcade games that are completely unobtainable. Typically arcade machines are found on a monthly rotation with other rare objects in the Stragetown Store. Several unfinished ones exist in the game, but the only ones that are fully implemented but not possible to obtain are these two.

Aside from those, several objects are unobtainable but otherwise fully functional, but are used elsewhere in the non-editable rooms. Namely, the X-Raider Arcade Game from the Asian Emporium, the Slot Machine from the Casino, and both the Tanning Bed and Treadmill from the Spa & Gym.

Here is an Action Replay code to spawn the 6 fully functional unobtainable objects in your pockets upon pressing the Select button as long as your inventory is empty.

94000130 FFFB0000
921690C0 00000000
021690C0 00000006
02166F8C 00A800A6
02166F90 00B500A9
02166F94 00B700B6
D2000000 00000000

94000130 FFFB0000
92169200 00000000
02169200 00000006
021670CC 00A800A6
021670D0 00B500A9
021670D4 00B700B6
D2000000 00000000

94000130 FFFB0000
92168D28 00000000
02168D28 00000006
02166BF4 00A800A6
02166BF8 00B500A9
02166BFC 00B700B6
D2000000 00000000

Baseball#

Watch on YouTubeThis one, titled "Baseball" is a very simple game where you time your button press twice to hit a ball and set a high score. It's pretty basic.

Arcade-Baseball
Favorite pastime of millions. This version strips the game to it's essentials.

Copter#

Watch on YouTubeThis one is interesting, we have confirmation from a credited programmer, Dan Posluns that he personally made this full clone of old school Apple Macintosh Stunt Copter, simply called 'Copter' in game. In it, like the original you drop stunt men on the hay in the wagon of a horse drawn carriage from various heights to set high scores. Unfortunately the machine emits an extremely loud sound, probably to emulate the spinning blades of a helicopter, but it's quite distracting in any room you place these in.

Arcade-Copter
Dropping civilians from helicopters into horse-drawn carriages full of hay is dubious fun.

Other non-functioning Arcade Machines#

While these objects spawn in and technically are placeable and possible to interact with, they are fairly pointless. Arcade: Generic chooses a random game between 0 and 10, and if it lands on 10, the game crashes because there is no game 10. When it chooses 0 through 9, all of the games appear black, because the machine doesn't load a color palette for the screen. Lunar Lander, Space Gunner, and Log Jump all load Space Armada and must be spawned in by editing an existing room object, as they crash the pockets screen. It unfortunately seems the developers didn't have time to clone Lunar Lander, Defender or Pitfall on time for release.

Arcade: Generic	Arcade-Lunar Lander	Arcade-Space Gunner	Arcade-Log Jump
This is just a generic game.	Insert money, steer your landing craft to land on the landing platform, rejoice, and repeat.	Fill outer space with your million jigawatt laserbeams of destruction and empty it of bad guys.	Why do these logs keep rolling? Where do they come from? Glorious victory awaits!

Game 9 is actually just a test program. It does nothing but display two X's on screen.

Unused Objects#

Hubcap#

Seen in the intro of the game, your car loses it's hubcap. It's actually fully modeled and present in the game. It doesn't do much.

Apparently Jeb was supposed to pick it up during the opening dialog scene, but for some reason it didn't make the cut.

Mole Hole#

This hole's graphics and data seems close in proximity to Lord Mole, implying it was somehow related to him. Perhaps you were going to have to dig him up, or he'd spawn somewhere out of it? The hole has transitional animations for growing and shrinking.

Package#

This package's graphics are close in proximity to those for the bills that appear at the concierge's desk, meaning it was probably supposed to be possible to recieve packages at some point, but they never ended up doing anything with it.

Big Foot Mask#

Completely unused and unknown what it's real purpose is. But we have some guesses.

It looks like our buddy Stu here has an unused animation named "BigFScare", typically only Aliens and Goons have scare animations. It's possible the developers intended that Big Foot would go on rampages if you forgot to feed him for too long, but never got around to finishing it. His hand is raised as well, which is probably where that unused scary mask would go.

Secret Warehouse Doors#

It's a shipping container door with a maple leaf on it. Considering the Secret Warehouse has a shipping container, it's likely this was supposed to be down there somewhere but it ended up being unnecessary. Apparently Stu is Canadian.

And another door intended for the Secret Warehouse, just a simple moving chicken wire gate. Makes sense.

Undocumented Stuff#

To do: There is definitely more stuff that belongs here. Look into mission scripts and see what weirdness there is. There's more than just lipstick. Look into GBA games the game responds to in Slot 2 and document it. Document treasure chest quest spawning mechanisms. (We now know this is potentially buggy, might belong in the bugs page.) Fire seems to do weird stuff.

The Sims 2 DS is full of very strange undocumented mechanics. Technically not unused, but so obscure, it's worth documenting here because of it.

Rotten Eggplant Lipstick in Vacuum Cleaner#

Watch on YouTubeDuring Ava Cadavra's occupation of the Penthouse, one of her missions is to obtain Rotten Eggplant Lipstick for her. For some reason, during this mission only, if you vacuum dust piles around the hotel, you can very rarely come across a tube of this lipstick as one of the items obtained in the minigame. It won't spawn in the vacuum minigame if your inventory is full, or if you already have the Rotten Eggplant Lipstick in your inventory. Normally you just buy the lipstick from the Strangetown Store, making this mechanic incredibly obscure. A normal player would probably never think to look in dust piles for the lipstick either, since the objects found in the Vacuum minigame are instantly sold, and never go into your inventory.

This is so obscure, it was previously believed the lipstick was an entirely unused vacuum object and was discovered through disassembly.

In addition, the text 'lipstick' and 'lipstick tubes' is present in the array for vacuum objects and dropped vacuum object phone calls, but the text that appears in the minigame specifically uses the proper name, and places the item in your inventory, leaving the text unused.

Obscure Leif Erikson Day Keelhaulin' Cards Minigame Change#

For whatever reason, when you play the Keelhaulin' Cards Minigame on October 9th- notable for being Leif Erikson Day, during the duration of the day, an extra card appears in Keelhaulin' Cards at the Casino. This is not mentioned or made clear to the player at all, even on that day. The card adds 10 to the score, but completely empties the treasure chest pot.

Card	Description

Button Controls#

While facing an intractable object or character, the player can normally press A to perform the topmost action displayed on the touch screen. Neither the game nor the manual mention how, by holding A and pressing the D-Pad appropriately, other actions and/or items in range can be selected using only the buttons.

Unused Graphics#

To do: Early Placeholder Vacuum and Super Drencher graphics.

Early Title Screen#

An unused titlescreen graphic was found in the files.

Early	Final

Early UI Leftovers and Mockups#

This graphic is a leftover of when the UI was originally going to be more similar to the GBA version. It must've seen some level of development at this stage before it was decided to rework it, since there's empty spaces for pocket items and collectibles and text.

This graphic actually seen in prerelease marketing materials, meaning they probably made demos that just put this image on the bottom screen as a placeholder because the UI wasn't fully implemented. Notably the render of Giuseppi Mezzoalto is just copied from his appearance in The Urbz: Sims in the City, also for the DS and developed by Amaze Entertainment.

These early graphics are mockups of the UI and an early UI for the Metal Detector found leftover in the files as well. Notably the early metal detector includes the bar that is usually displayed on the top screen. Both the mockup and early graphic have the controls inverted compared to the final, probably because most people are right handed.

Mockup	Early Version	Final

These are the leftovers of the early art gallery minigame. You can see a version of these graphics in prerelease materials.

Early UI	Buttons Inactive	Buttons Active	Final

Placeholders and Leftovers from Other Games#

There's some leftover and placeholder graphics in the data. Some of it we know what it is, other stuff, not so much.

This graphic was found, and it seems it was probably also a leftover Nintendo DS version of The Urbz: Sims in the City.

This is a leftover from the Nintendo DS version of The Urbz: Sims in the City, specifically the Street Artist minigame. Probably was used as a placeholder for the art gallery menu?

Normal	Dimmed

This is a leftover from Nintendo DS version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe which is another game Amaze Entertainment made.

Yet another leftover from the Nintendo DS version of The Urbz: Sims in the City. This one's for the Pet Show minigame.

Unused Mission Text#

To do: More text. There's a lot here.

There's a lot of unused dialog related to missions that have been cut or changed in the final version of the game.

Early Missions Leftovers#

The beginning of the game was changed significantly as the game was in development and several text lines remain that have events play out in a significantly different manner than in the final.

Alternative Casino Opening#

The game makes the player open the casino before they can have their first guest. This was an early mission that would have had the player opening the casino a little bit later in the story.

Alternative Rat Cave Opening#

The game allows the player to build the Rat Cave as soon as they get their first guest, and if the player does not build the rat cave before then, it will be automatically built by Tristan Legend after Ava Cadavra leaves. This mission has the Rat Cave opening up during Frankie Fusilli's stay.

Inviting Guests to the Bovine Shrine#

Automatically, three hotel guests (Ara Fusilli, Auda Sherif, and Sancho Paco Panza) are stuck in a trance in the Bovine Shrine. This mission dialogue shows that the player used to have to hand out invitations to hotel guests, who would then get stuck in the Bovine Shrine.

Entering the Meditation Room#

This mission dialogue would have been used after Ava Cadavra would have closed the Bovine Shrine. In-game, the Bovine Shrine is never closed off and the player can go in and out of it at will during Ava Cadavra's entire stay.

Building the Sun Deck#

This mission takes place after the mission where you retrieve the Galvatronic Power Recharger for Optimum Alfred. In the final game, the Sun Deck is available from the start of the game, likely as a result of this mission getting cut.

Robot Ick Piles and Data Modulator#

This mission takes place after the previous unused Building the Sun Deck mission, and before the mission where Optimum Alfred requests 20 Nuclear Fuel Rods from you. This mission was also cut for some reason, leaving the Robot Ick Pile object unused.