List of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door pre-release and unused content

This article pertains to the beta elements of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Beta elements
This game was initially going to simply be called Paper Mario 2 and feature a far different logo, one reminiscent of the original Paper Mario ' s logo.

All of the partners from Paper Mario were going to appear but were cut-off as well. Bow and Parakarry were the only ones left. There was also a strange robot creature and two palette swaps of Screamy. Bobbery also had a prototype sprite, which depicts him wearing army gear. There was also going to be a probable mini-boss called Dark Atomic Boo. Dark Atomic Boo would be a Dark Boo version of Atomic Boo, and was going to be fought on floor 50 of the Pit of 100 Trials.

Also, in the original trailer, one can see a HP Plus badge that is located on a ledge beyond a moving platform which has a wall over it in mid course (and assuming it could be reached with the help of Vivian). None of this made it into the final game (except the area where these things are, minus the things themselves of course). The trailer also showed that Item Shops would be labeled with Mushrooms, much as in Super Paper Mario, rather than the Fire Flowers seen in the final game. Red Bones was initially named "Red Koopa Skeleton". In the same trailer you can see that "Tornado Jump" was initially called "Hurricane Jump". The status element Slow had a different icon, a snail instead of a sad purple face.

Aside from scenery, there are also two songs that were unused in the game. One sounds like a theme used for an introduction of a character, and the other sounds like a boss fight. This may mean that another character was going to be in the game but was written out of the final version like these songs.

The official site depicts KP Pete as a red Koopa Troopa and a trash-talker. This may represent KP Pete's personality and appearance in the Beta version, or is simply an error on the part of the website's creators. A status element called Sick was going to appear, but was deleted midway through development. All that is known about it is its effect, preventing those effected from using items. It should be noted that a status element called Sick would later be featured in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, with a different effect.

The demo version also has a few changes. If tattle is used, Goombella will say "I usually would have something witty to say here, but I'm waiting for the final version!" X-Nauts were also called Boomer Gangers and Dusk Bones were called "Koopa Skeletons".

Dialog
Inside the game data, dialog files are stored in the directory "root/msg/$C", where "$C" is an appropriate language or country code, such as "US". The dialog is split between 1 global file and 259 local files. English and other Latin languages are stored in raw ASCII format. Japanese and other non-Latin languages are stored in 2Byte unicode format, with a few modifications to save space.

Names in parenthesis in the table headers (eg. "hom_00" below) are the names of the text files in which the dialog can be found. Names in the first column of the table are identifier strings used for specific dialog scenes within those files.

The dialog uses several XML-like tags to alter the presentation of the text. These are enclosed between "<>".


 * &lt;wait&gt; causes the text to pause.
 * &lt;dynamic&gt; causes the dialog to be rendered as "falling" onto the screen.
 * &lt;wave&gt; causes the letters of the dialog to move in small circles.
 * &lt;k&gt; pauses the text until the player presses
 * &lt;p&gt; scrolls the text upwards to make room for more.
 * &lt;icon&gt; renders a small image into the text. Typically, this is a button used in explaining controls.
 * &lt;col&gt; changes the text to a color in RGBA format.
 * &lt;NUM&gt; represents a number of coins.
 * &lt;ITEM&gt; represents an item name.
 * &lt;s&gt; has an unknown use.
 * &lt;AN&gt; represents either "a" or "an" depending on which is appropriate grammatically.
 * &lt;system&gt; renders the text box in blue and plays a short tone.
 * &lt;o&gt; has an unknown use.
 * &lt;dkey&gt; has an unknown use.
 * &lt;shake&gt; causes the letters of the text to move erratically.
 * &lt;housou&gt; creates a "mechanical" text box.
 * &lt;tec&gt; creates the text box used by TEC-XX
 * &lt;diary&gt; creates a "ripped paper" text box.
 * &lt;scale&gt; changes the font size.
 * &lt;wpos&gt; has an unknown use.
 * &lt;S&gt; represents either nothing or the letter s, depending on which is appropriate grammatically.
 * &lt;small&gt; creates a small text box.
 * &lt;select&gt; creates a list of choices.
 * &lt;keyxon&gt; allows the text box to be advanced with (x).
 * &lt;kanban&gt; creates a wooden sign background.
 * &lt;speed&gt; controls the speed with which individual letters appear on the screen.
 * &lt;boss&gt; creates the special text box used by Hooktail.
 * &lt;se&gt; has an unknown use.
 * &lt;majo&gt; creates the text box used by the Shadow Queen.
 * &lt;anim&gt; has an unknown use.
 * &lt;!&gt; is a comment. [?]
 * &lt;plate&gt; Creates the text box used by the Rogueport notice board.
 * &lt;pos&gt; has an unknown use.
 * &lt;AN_ITEM&gt; combines &lt;AN&gt; with &lt;ITEM&gt;