This game has a bunch of cheat codes. Only six of them were published in cheat books, and they're kind of boring – they just unlock the minigames so you can play them from the main menu. The rest are somewhat more interesting.
Credits and SCredits warp you to the full credits and the Saffire credits, respectively. It's unclear why they chose this route as opposed to having a "Credits" option on the main menu, like in the demo.
Saffire warps you to the final lavaboard sequence.
Finally, EvilGeorge and DiePinky recolor Takua to use a unobtainable color schemes. This isn't saved, so if you quit and reload your save, Takua will be colored as normal. My best guess is that these cheats were meant to test the contrast of the GBA, to make sure that dark and bright sprites were equally visible on the non-backlit screen. "EvilGeorge" is probably a reference to Takua's development name, George, which was also used internally by Templar Studios while they were making MNOG.
UPDATE 5/25/20: The six codes used to unlock minigames are actually a combination of each Toa's mask and canister codes! For example, Lewa's mask code is 3-LT, and his can code is 154, so the cheat code that unlocks Kewa Bird Riding is 3LT154. This feature is mentioned offhand in early press releases, but not in the game manual or either walkthrough. Weird!
Earlier today, I sat down and built my Brakas concept. I'm still not convinced that I've got the torso right, but I'm very happy with how this fella looks. For such a basic build, it has a lot of personality! (Obviously the click hinges aren't quite accurate, but they're the same length as the Mata neck piece and they provide much-needed articulation.)
UPDATE: With time, I've grown less and less convinced about the foot torso. It's still a fun build tho
Before I get too far afield, I should probably finish up with the demo video. There's less to say about the second half, but there's still some interesting stuff going on!
00:32: I haven't looked too closely at the minigames yet – I might circle back around to them later. All I have to say at the moment is that you can see the camera (I think?) reflected in the dark part of the screen.
00:37: We cut back to regular gameplay, somewhere in Ta-Wahi. The terrain doesn't match any map in the final game. Takua knocks the masks off a couple of Fikou, and they each spawn a pickup that refills one pip of health. At the risk of repeating myself, this doesn't look like the health pickup in the final game to me.
There are also several lightning ball pickups scattered about.
Curiously, collecting these seems to increase the counter displayed in
the lower right hand corner of the HUD, next to an image of the energy
pickup from the final game. The lightning ball appears in the final game
as a projectile launched by the electric spiders in Le-Koro. Perhaps it
was used as a stand-in here before the energy pickup's sprites were
finalized. It's also interesting that the pickup doesn't seem to
replenish energy by itself.
Perhaps energy pickups were intended to be
added to the inventory, where they could be used by the player? The
unused inventory sprites seem to suggest as much, as would this tip (which only shows up if you talk to a particular Matoran in the tutorial more than once):
This is just an excerpt. The rest is unremarkable.
When the Fikous are K.O.ed, a star animation appears over
their heads, probably to indicate that they aren't actually dead. In the
final game, this animation is used when stunnable enemies are blinded
with the firestaff, as well as when a Madu fruit hits Takua on the
head. My guess is that it was done for performance reasons. The game
has a real problem with screen tearing when too many objects are loaded
into a level, and if every defeated enemy spawned a star animation, that
would effectively double the number of objects. Alternately, this
could've been changed to better differentiate when an enemy is stunned
from when it's defeated.
00:44: A jump cut to a different location in the same map, where Takua uses the firestaff. There's nothing too interesting going on here, but it does give us a better sense of what the map looked like.
00:49: Cut to Huai Snowball Sling. Again, I have nothing to add here at the moment.
00:57: The titlecard shown in the last few seconds is identical to the one shown in the first few seconds.
Folks, I've been busy. You see, it turns out that there are tools that will do an OK job of decompiling a ROM automatically. Armed with Ghidra and basic programming knowledge, I've found out enough about this game's code to be dangerous.
For example, I can now edit the ROM to change what objects are spawned in each level. This has a few significant advantages over my previous approach, which was to change the values in RAM that determine which sprite an object use. For one, you can spawn the actual object, as opposed to having a fully functional palm tree that uses the object's sprites. Additionally, the object is more likely to use its correct color palette if you spawn it in this way.
This patch is for the North American release of the game, which you can find at the BioMediaProject site. You can apply it using any UPS patching tool. Let me know if you make it past the tutorial – one of the jumps is trickier than before! (Hint: try talking to the Matoran Brakases.)
Also, looking closer at the Brakas sprites, I don't think it uses a Slizer torso, as most fan builds do. Here's my proposed build for it:
While the Mata foot torso is odd, it has precedent. This game's version of the Maha (Mahi?) definitely uses one:
Edit a/o July 27: I've fallen out of love with the mata foot torso, but still contend that the Brakas doesn't use a Slizer body.
For a one minute video, there's a lot to unpack here. This post will cover the first 31 seconds. If you're playing along at home, it might be helpful to go frame by frame, which you can do on Youtube by pausing the video and pressing the period and comma keys.
00:01: This footage, released in early March, obviously came before the Maori controversy in June, so it uses the game's original name.
00:06: Sadly, this splash screen doesn't appear in the final game. It was replaced by a similar image in which Takua isn't dabbing. Neither the dab nor the serifed "PRESS START" are in the game's memory.
00:08: The demo menu screen. The BIONICLE logo is slightly smaller and the arch it's displayed on is slightly larger than in the final game, perhaps to make room for a subtitle. Tahu's mask looks like it's based off one of the prototype models with a code on the forehead. The bottom of the frame is also slightly larger, with a strange piece in the center. The "Tohunga Games" option was, understandably, changed to "Mini Games" in the released version. There's also a "Credits" option. Once upon a time, the Cutting Room Floor page for this game mentioned that there are two unused options on the title screen that both go to the credits. Unfortunately, the Youtube video showing this has been deleted.
A quick comparison between the demo footage and the final game.
If you're unfamiliar with the final map, it's available here.
00:12: Here's the starting beach, which looks fairly similar to how it appears in the final game. The big differences are that Jala isn't here and there are two palm trees. Madu fruit is bound to the left shoulder button, and it appears that Matau's Kau Kau staff is bound to the right. The number of Madu fruit seems to be glitched. A similar thing happens in the final game when you use cheats to have more than 199 of any object:
On first glance, the Madu trees look odd, but that's just because their sprite doesn't have a shadow, unlike the final version.
00:14: Takua shakes a tree twice. In the final game, this animation ends with a Madu fruit falling on his head, stunning him. In the demo, this doesn't happen.
00:18: An abrupt cut to further up the beach. There's a palm frond poking in from the bottom left corner. I assume that, between the last segment and this one, the player cut down the rightmost Madu tree using the Kau Kau staff. However, this particular palm frond is not a part of the final felled Madu sprite, implying that sprite was changed between the demo and the final build.
The player goes on to smash the boulder using Onewa's hammer, using the same animation as in the final game. They pick up the rock ammunition, heft the smaller boulder over their head, and walk further up the beach. The one change to this section of the beach is that the tutorial signs from the final game are absent.
00:25: Takua throws the boulder he's carrying, and a shadow flashes in the upper right corner. It's unclear if this is a Rahi or if the throwing animation was glitched somehow. I lean towards the latter.
00:27: Another smash cut to a higher part of the level. The shape of the coastline is different, but the rocks and treeline are the same as in the final version of the game, which means we can be pretty certain about where this was. (See the map, above.)
The Hoi turtles and Takua are unremarkable, but look: it's our old friend, the Unnamed Bird Rahi! Three of them, in fact!
The demo footage is approximately 1.7x larger than the final game.
The sprites I've added are scaled 2x.
There are a few notable things about the bird as it appears in this demo. First, the shadows for the normal flying animation are different from those used in the final game. I'm willing to bet that they are also pixel-perfect silhouettes, just like those for the unused swooping animation. Second – though this could just be me seeing things – I think that there are more frames for the normal flying animation than are in the final game. (If I had to guess, I'd say there are twice as many.) The picture above hopefully illustrates my point; if it doesn't, well, that's fine.
00:29: One of the birds hits Takua, knocking him from 11 health to 0 health. Neither a damage animation nor a death animation plays. In any case, the bird uses the unused swoop animation, and it seems to include the frames that are missing in the final build.
00:31: As the video fades to black, the bird on the right swoops at Takua's previous position. This animation also includes frames missing from the final build. Note that its shadow appears to be directly below it (that is, not offset left or right). This will be important in a future post.
There are nine screenshots and one video of development builds of Lego Bionicle GBA, and I plan on analyzing them all. But, before I get too deep into things, I should probably establish where and when they all came from.
The video, mov_tales.avi, is included on the Power Pack CD, and was last modified on March 7, 2001, like most everything else on the disc.
mov_tales.avi.
The first batch of screenshots we have were posted by IGN Pocket on Monday, March 26, 2001, following Nintendo's Camp Game Boy Advance press event, which happened over the weekend. Thankfully, the images are still hosted on IGN's servers. (They're numbered 1.jpg through 8.jpg, if you want to look for yourself.)
The eight screenshots from IGN Pocket.
The next set of screenshots was posted by NintendoWorldReport some time later. Since the five images they posted are captioned Electronic Entertainment Expo 2001, it's likely that they were given these screenshots at that conference, which took place from May 17-19, 2001. Four of the five screenshots are functionally identical to those posted by IGN; the only differences are the jpeg artifacts and the IGN watermark.
The five screenshots from NintendoWorldReport.
There are other versions of these images, presumably because the press kits with these images were distributed to gaming sites. The IGN and NWR sets are just the only ones that mention a specific date. An extreme example of this is the European gaming site GameReactor. It's unclear, but it seems like they posted their versions in 2003, in the mistaken belief that they were screenshots from Bionicle: The Game (GBA). They have the same five screenshots as NWR, but they are resized to be 500px wide. This is kind of a double-edged sword; they're blurrier, but the jpeg artifacts are less of an issue. These versions of the screenshots are the ones in the BS01 "Quest for the Toa" gallery. (BS01 also has a pixel-perfect version of the Le-Koro screenshot, which I haven't been able to source.)
The five screenshots from GameReactor, for completeness' sake.
To put these dates in perspective, NWR reported on July 18, 2001 that the game had been finished "for a while," and was waiting on Nintendo's approval. That means that the Power Pack demo footage and the IGN screenshots were distributed around 3-4 months before the game was finished.
Anyway, that's a lot of text to say very little. Next time, I'll start actually analyzing the differences between the demo footage and the final game, which should hopefully be more exciting!
Tl;dr: the Power Pack demo video is from before March 7, 2001. At least 8 of the 9 screenshots are from before March 24, 2001. For reference, the game was supposedly finished "a while" before July 18, 2001.
Remember when I said I wasn't going to rip another spritesheet anytime soon? I lied. While I was doing research for another post, I noticed that the Unnamed Bird Rahi had sprites that aren't used in the final game. One thing led to another, and here we are:
At this point, you may be thinking "wait a minute, there are twice as many shadows as birds there!" Weird, huh? Also, the "used" shadows are shaped differently from the "used" birds, while the "unused" shadows are pixel-perfect silhouettes of the "unused" birds.
My going theory is that the "unused" shadows were temporary sprites dating back to a demo version of the game where the bird's animations used 10 frames. As for why all ten frames are still in the game, it looks like someone stopped revising the bird's sprites midway through once the decision was made that the "unused" sprites would, well, not be used. This also explains why they weren't revised to look more like true shadows.
