Ultraman Episode I: The Taro Adventure

The mid-2000s were arguably the peak of a legal dispute between Tsuburaya Productions (the creators of the series) and the Thailand-based Chaiyo Productions (who had distribution rights for the first six installments of the series in their country) over the complete copyright of the Ultraman series outside of Japan.

With this in mind, Ultraman Episode I: The Taro Adventure was one of the first two of ten Chaiyo-licensed games created during that time, and is a beat-em-up game in which Ultraman Taro must defeat various monsters in six different settings.

Unused Graphic#

Data\MAINMENU\MAINMENU_BACKGROUD.BMP is an early version of the main menu's background image. Note the spelling of Taro as "Taroh" and the lack of the Japanese part of the "Chaiyo" Ultraman logo.

Unused Enemy#

As seen in a promotional image for the game, the kaiju Mandarin Grass was set to appear in this game, but was cut. Despite this, there are still some associated files, such as enemy_mandarin.gan, which defines its sprites, and two HUD images inside of the folder Custom:

CUSTOM_ENEMY_FACE_MANDARIN.BMP

CUSTOM_ENEMY_TEXT_MANDARIN.BMP

Unused Text#

Deep Hunter Leftover#

Found at offset 0x6A580 of the game's executable are leftover text strings from Deep Hunter, a previous game by CyberPlanet Interactive:

   Deep hunter is a shooting game in the deep ocean. There are three major sea creatures: octopus, green jellyfish and red jellyfish. Octopus earns 5 points and 10 Oxygen points. Green jellyfish earns 10 points. Red jellyfish earns 20 points. There is chance to earn Bonus point too. Press the UP and DOWN arrow key to control the diver's movement. When ready to shoot, press the centre button. Earn as many points as you can within the time limit.

Deep Hunter
Version 1.0


Copyright 2003
CyberPlanet Interactive.
All rights reserved.

Moontra Kid Leftovers#

Nearby, at offset 0x6AC38, is the list of enemies from Moontra Kid - Episode 1: Drug War, which is seen after beating the game.

MINITOBACCO
MOSQUITO
FAT - THIEF
THIN - THIEF
BITEFLOWER
JUNGLEMAN
ZOMBIE
SNAKE
MISTICFLOWER
GAS - MAN
TANK
SHOOTER
ROBOMAN
GHOST
NEEDLE
ELECTRIC-SNAKE
TOBACCO
AMPHETTAMINE
MARIJUANA
COCAINE
HEROIN

In addition, ItemText.dat, Other.dat and Text.dat, located in the folder Data\DAT, when decompressed under zlib, reveal unmodified text data from Moontra Kid. More specifically, these files contain the item/drug description, quiz intro/outcome, and quiz question/choice/answer strings, respectively.

References#