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

This is a list of pre-release and unused content for the game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Reveal trailer
This game was initially titled Paper Mario 2 and featured a far different logo, one reminiscent of the original Paper Mario's logo.

Part of the original trailer shows an extra ledge above the pipe in the room directly east of the Thousand Year Door, with an HP Plus badge on it. It could be accessed via a moving platform which had a wall over it halfway, which appeared to be passable with help from Vivian. Also, Beldam and Doopliss were originally going to be fought somewhere in Riverside Station. 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, one 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. The jumping and partner swapping sound effects from the previous game are used.

Interactive Multi-Game Demo Disc Version 18 Demo
A demo version released on a GameCube promotional disc includes various scriptual differences. Though the demo only allows for fifteen minutes of play at a time, the files inside of the game reveal several early concepts and placeholders.


 * If tattle is used outside of battle, Goombella will say "I usually would have something witty to say here, but I'm waiting for the final version!", which would imply that the actual tattles for areas had not yet been written.
 * X-Nauts are called "Boomer Gangers", the Red Bones boss is called "Red Koopa Skeleton", and Dull Bones are called "Koopa Skeletons."
 * In addition to the above, Pale Piranhas were simply called "Piranha Plants" and Poison Puffs were called "Poision Foggs."
 * Petal Meadows is called "Star Crystal Field" by the menu and "Petal Fields" by Goombella.
 * Glitzville is referred to as its Japanese name, "Oolong Town", implying it hadn't been localized yet. In addition, Twilight Town is called "Spectralia" several times in the script - a completely original name.
 * All instances of Rogueport being used are instead spelled "Roqueport."
 * Hooktail is said to be weak to frogs instead of crickets.
 * Goombella's description on the partner menu also mentions "Goomelda, wisest of female Goombas", a reference to the character Zelda from The Legend of Zelda series.
 * Niff T. is named "Toodle" in the demo, Bub-ulber is named "Bub-ulbo", Toce T. is named "Dain T", Merlee is named "Sando", Ms. Mowz is named "Miss Mowz", and Pungent is named "Punto."
 * Dried Bouquets are named "Dried Flowers", Life Shrooms are named "Emergency Shrooms", and Courage Shells are called "Courage Colas."
 * The Spin-Jump is called a "Ground Pound" in the demo.

Debug mode
By pressing, , , , , and on the title screen, debug mode is enabled. Subsequently, pressing on the title screen displays the game's build date, and crashes now display a crash report. This works on all versions.

Graphics
All of the partners from Paper Mario were going to appear but were cut-off as well. Lady Bow and Parakarry were the only ones left. There was also a strange robot creature and two palette swaps of Screamy. Admiral Bobbery also had a different sprite, which depicts him wearing army gear. There was also going to be a dark version of the Atomic Boo, which would've appeared in the Poshley Sanctum as a mini-boss. Bonetail's head also looked different, having blue eyes, as he did not have eyes in the final game. A businessman Cheep Cheep was going to appear with an unknown role. Red variants of Buzzy Beetles, Parabuzzies, and Spiky Parabuzzies were going to appear, but they were removed in exception of the pair of Glitz Pit Red Spike Tops. Hyper and Ultra Bob-omb sub-species were also unused.

Unused status effect
An unused POW-Down status exists in the game's coding under the name "battle_common". When hacked into the game, it displays the message "Attack has dropped!"

Music
There are two unused tracks. 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.

Fully translated
Presumably for the sake of completeness, all of Mario's then-four partners have dialogue for when he gets promoted to the major league in the Glitz Pit. However, only Yoshi's is used, as he was required to beat the Iron Clefts and there's no opportunity to change partners in the ensuing cutscene.

Similarly, in Twilight Town, all then-five partners have dialogue for when the Mayor sends Mario off and wishes him well. Only Vivian's is used because, at the last opportunity to change partners, Mario had no choice but to use Vivian as Doopliss had turned the others against him.

Apparently, at one point, the Pit of 100 Trials was going to have traps on some floors:

At one point, upon defeating the Shadow Queen, saving, and restarting, Mario would begin the game by himself and would have to manually get his partners back together again. Only Koops, Flurrie, and Yoshi have completed dialogue, the latter saying something about how he "registered us for the Glitz Pit again". Vivian has untranslated Japanese dialogue.

Other dialogue
Inside the game data, dialogue files are stored in the directory "root/msg/$C", where "$C" is an appropriate language or country code, such as "US". The Japanese version is simply stored in "root/msg" without the language or country code. The dialogue is split between 1 global file (game-wide) and 259 local files (for the separate locations). English and other Latin languages are stored in raw ASCII format. Japanese version is stored in the Japanese variant of ANSI format (Shift-JIS), with a few modifications to save space.

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

The dialogue 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; positions the text at a specified location in the text box
 * &lt;AN_ITEM&gt; combines &lt;AN&gt; with &lt;ITEM&gt;

Miscellaneous
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 early versions of the script, or is simply an error on the part of the website's creators.