Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga/Kiosk Demo

This is a sub-page of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.

A North American kiosk demo of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga that could be played in local stores prior to the game's release. Research into the ROM (namely the discovery of the build date) reveals that the game itself had been finished at that point in time, and that this demo is merely a stripped-down version of the international release. While all the audio tracks, items, bros. attacks, overworld moves and event pointers seem to be available, most of the sprites, enemy data, room data and even minigames are missing.

General Differences

Title Screen

When waiting long enough at the title screen the intro cutscene will start. Aside from this Demo, this feature is only present in the Japanese release.

Mario Bros.

Both brothers start out at Level 1, their Stache and Speed stats are kept the same but BP uses the Japanese release's starting values (14 for Mario and 16 for Luigi). The HP, Pow and Def stats got boosted.

Stat	Demo	Release
HP	20 24	10 12
BP	14 16	10 10 (English), 14 16 (Japan)
Pow	14 12	12 11
Def	13 14	9 9
Speed	13 9	13 9
Stache	6 5	6 5

It's also worth noting that not only were some stats increased, but after battles your health will always be fully replenished. If the player ever receives a game over then the game will fade into the title screen, as opposed to the Game Over screen.

As for the inventory the only options you can choose are Items and Stats. Equipment is absent, and the map is not given to you, thus it is absent as well. You can edit memory to set the map flag, but it will only show up as a black screen in your inventory.

The player also starts out with 200 coins, 10 Mushrooms, 5 Syrups and 3 1-Up Mushrooms, once again to make the demo easier.

Stardust Fields

Final	Demo

When pressing Start on the title screen, the game sends you straight to Stardust Fields, skipping the starting part of the game set in the Mushroom Kingdom and Koopa Cruiser. The layout of Stardust Fields has also been changed, with rooms connecting to each other differently, and some being completely omitted.

The rope jumping minigame was replaced by the battle tutorial that would take place in the Koopa Cruiser in the final game, except here it's got its own unique battle background which isn't in the final game. Going back into the aforementioned room once the tutorial is finished isn't possible, as you automatically appear on the other side of the building. The Save Album and Green pipe are also missing, but three Fighter Fly enemies have been added in the cave between Stardust Fields and Hoohoo Village, which is enemy-free in the retail version.

The side quest where the Bros. have to look for 100 coins for Tolstar was also removed, and despite the game giving you 200 coins in the beginning your money actually isn't of any consequence whatsoever as he battles you soon after you gave him all your coins.

Hoohoo Village

Final	Demo

The village has been slightly changed, similarly to Stardust Fields. Some rooms are omitted and a cave entrance has been removed. The rock that Fawful places to stop you will already be there and the bridge will already be fixed. Fawful himself, as well as Sledge and Mallet will be absent.

Thanks For Playing Screen

Not too far into Hoohoo Mountain, after the room with the first whirlwind, you're presented with this screen thanking you for playing this demo, previously used for similar purpose in the E3 2003 demo. One of the debug rooms (the one at room ID 8) in the final game was replaced to make space for it.

Miscellaneous

It's worth noting that while this demo seems to borrow from the Japanese version (namely the starting stats and the title screen intro cutscene) it lacks the Japanese-exclusive Fire Dash glitch. The "Highjump on Small Mario" money trick converts 1 of Luigi's HP into 1 coin like in the international release, as opposed to the 2 HP into 1 coin on the Japanese release.

As for inaccessible content, the following screens can be triggered by memory editing:

• Buy Items
• Buy Pants & Badges
• Sell Items
• Staff Credits
• Inventory Cutscene (Koopa Photographer)
• Save Screen

Modding in a Save Album and attempting to save the game runs the saving procedure as expected. But it seems to be glitched, as the game will write over the same few bytes over and over. Not to mention, the Load Save and Game Over screens seems to be absent, so you cannot load saves anyway.

The Staff Credits are missing the background graphics, but all the sprites and text are present. Aside from that there are no differences compared to the release version.

Build Date

This build date is found at 0x33bb6c in the ROM.

Oct 27 2003 18:22:53