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.

Demo
The script of the demo version has a few differences. If tattle is used, 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 were also called "Boomer Gangers" and Dry Bones were called "Koopa Skeletons". Petal Meadows was also called Star Crystal Field (Petal Field by Goombella).

Graphic
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 purple version of Atomic Boo. Bonetail's head also looked different, having it slightly brighter and 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 Buzzy Beetles were going to appear, but they were removed in exception of the pair of Glitz Pit Red Spike Tops. Some strong Bob-omb sub-species also appeared.

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.

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

Badges
Though it is not shown in the chart above, there are two badges that uses -31 BP and - 128, and through basic mathematics, it gives the player BP instead of taking it. The second one gives 128 BP although it glitches the graphics of the Badge page it is on, and glitches the next page if it is in the bottom quarter (Last two of that page).

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.