Little Town Hero

Little Town Hero
Developer: Game Freak Publishers: Game Freak (Digital), Rainy Frog (JP), NIS America (US/EU) Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows Released internationally: October 16, 2019 (Switch), July 2, 2020 (XB1/Windows), July 9, 2020 (Steam) Released in JP: April 23, 2020 (PS4) Released in US: June 23, 2020 (PS4) Released in EU: June 26, 2020 (PS4) This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused music. This game has revisional differences.

Little Town Hero is a little game about a little boy living in a little town, occasionally saving his little townsfolk from not-so-little monsters. It was developed by a little company named Game Freak, better known for their involvement in the Pokémon video game franchise. It also features Toby Fox (with the help of Game Freak's own composer Hitomi Sato) as main composer for the original soundtrack.

It was released only one month before the highly-anticipated Pokémon Sword and Shield, getting very little fanfare and very little praise from critics.

To do: Any more unused graphics? Prerelease page. There are loads of unused animations in the game.

Unused Graphics

Early Character Icons

Icon	Filename	Notes
	face01	Early design for the protagonist, shown in concept art by art director Haruka Tochigi.
	face04_sori	Horse-Off-Course/Solitiba-kun, the mascot of Game Freak's Pocket Card Jockey.
	face06_oldman
	face07_girl
	face08_oldwoman
	face09_ojisan	Translation: Uncle
	face10_onanoko.png	Translation: Girl
	face10_onanoko2
	face11_archer
	face12_nekko	Translation: Cat
	face13_innu	Translation: Dog
	face14_hatsumei	Translation: Inventor
	face15_heroine	Early design for Pasmina.
	face16_uma	Translation: Horse
	face16_uma2	Also duplicated under the filename "all".
	face17_obachan	Translation: Aunt

Unused Special Effects

Icon	Filename	Notes
	battle_fix01_118	A pair of glaring eyes.
	battle_fix01_119	A tongue licking its lips.
	battle_fix01_120	A lightbulb representing an idea.

Early Dazzit Icons

Various assets, including various menu elements and the support characters' abilities. In the final game, the only support character' assistance to manifest in the form of a Dazzit is Margo.

Icon	Final
	(There are no green Dazzits in the final game.)

Battle Result

A sheet of sprites presumably for a transition at the end of each battle. It features a snake motif (as many elements of the town itself).

Unused Scrapbook Mugshots

picbook_chr_20	picbook_chr_21	picbook_chr_22	picbook_chr_23	picbook_chr_24	picbook_chr_25	picbook_chr_26	picbook_chr_27	picbook_chr_28
picbook_chr_47 - 53	picbook_chr_54	picbook_chr_55	picbook_chr_56
(Blank)

Unused mugshots for the non-unique non-playable characters and the stage support objects. Additionally, 7 consecutive blank mugshot sprites exist suggesting the possibility of scrapped planned characters/bosses.

Full Scrapbook (Final)

Early Battle HUD

Town (Working Title) - Reveal trailer

eftx_backlinetrace

Queue bar for the enemy's Dazzits.

eftx_upsuji and etfx_ideasix

Placeholders for how player's Dazzits would be displayed in battle. Both of them use the unused green Dazzit. The second image exemplifies how stat buffs and debuffs would have been shown.

battle fix01

Some leftovers from the original battle HUD (namely the word "Voltage") exist within many other elements of the final HUD, though they have been obscured by red crosses.

Miscellaneous

spirits

Colored crystals with sequenced numbers inside them. Possibly a counter of some sort.

Skill_tree_icons

Unused Models

18_sobaY

Yarn (Present, Used)	Yarn (Past, Unused)	Purl (Used)

At one point, the protagonist Axe travels into the past, where he encounters younger versions of some of the other characters. One of the characters he finds are his friend Pasmina's grandmother Yarne (Soba in Japanese) and Pasmina's long-deceased mother Purl (Fram in Japanese). Apparently Yarne was intended to look younger, however her "young" model is just a duplicate of Purl's model; additionally, Purl doesn't have textures of her own and directly uses young Yarne's textures instead.

19_siro

A very small kind of sheep-like creature. Rendered in completely different much cartoonish style from the other sheep in the game. Concept art for it appears in the Life in the Village art book.

23_pickel_child

Unused model	Town (Working Title) - Reveal trailer

An alternate model for Axe, seen during a cutscene in the game's 2018 reveal trailer. Neither the model nor the cutscene are used in the final game.

Unused Music

Some early versions of existing tracks are present in the files. The differences between them and the final mix are rather minimal ranging from different pitch range and/or instrumentation. The early mixes are louder as well.

Main Theme

maintheme_concept_field (Early)	bgm_cb_prologue (Final)

Field (Coal Mines)

field_idea_COAL_1 (Early)	bgm_cb_field_coal (Final)

Field (Main Street)

field_idea_COMMERCIAL_1 (Early)	bgm_cb_field_commercial (Final)

Field (Farm)

field_idea_FARM_1 (Early)	bgm_cb_field_farm (Final)

Pasmina's Theme

girl_theme (Early)	bgm_cb_ev_girl (Final)

Want To Talk About Sheep?

girl_theme_lively (Early)	bgm_cb_ev_girl_02 (Final)

Win By A Hair

sat_batle_idea_fun (Early)	bgm_cb_bt_fun (Final)

Unused Sounds

The track "Last Episode!" from Undertale is present as 355709288.wem. Strings in the Main.txt file suggest the track was lifted directly from UNDERTALE Soundtrack as implied by its internal filename "66 Last Episode!". According to an interview, Game Freak used some of the music from Undertale as placeholders without Toby's permission, so this may have been a leftover from that time.

Revisional Differences

To do: Conflicting or unknown dates between updates.

Version 1.1.0

Released on October 16, 2019.

• Added English language support.

Version 1.2.0

Released in April 2020 for the Switch eShop version. The physical release of the game and every other platform have this version included by default.

• Updated copyright on the title screen:

v1.1.0	v1.2.0

• Added Chinese language (simple and traditional) support.
• Various optimization improvements.
• Easy Mode option.

Version 1.2.1

Released on April 21, 2020.

• Minor bug fixes.