Rhythm Tengoku (Game Boy Advance)

Rhythm Tengoku
Developers: Nintendo SPD Group No. 1, J.P Room Recordings Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Game Boy Advance Released in JP: August 3, 2006 This game has unused areas. This game has unused code. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article This game has a data page

Rhythm Tengoku is what happens when popular Japanese music producer/singer Tsunku♂ partners up with the team behind WarioWare - a weird but awesome rhythm game filled with all sorts of wacky characters (and lots of monkeys), which further resulted in the Rhythm Heaven series.

While exclusive to Japan, it actually requires little to no knowledge of Japanese to pick up and play, making it a good (and later a popular) import title, though a fan translation is available. It's also the last first-party GBA game, coming two years after the Nintendo DS' launch.

Note: all offsets listed here are pertinent to the revision 0 (Rev. 0) rom unless specified otherwise. If you are playing a revision 1 (Rev. 1) copy, offsets mentioned may not be accurate.

To do: Ongoing decomp could help provide insight. Unused notification for the Rhythm Library. More stuff from this game might've been posted on the Rhythm Heaven Modding Discord.

Sub-Pages

Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Data

Unused Sequences The obsession with monkeys continue.

Debug Menu Snippets from various parts of development.

Unused Audio Leftovers from scrapped Rhythm Games and more.

Unused Graphics

Rhythm Test

Location: 008EFF88

A test layout of the line chart the machine prints.

Location: 008F0160

Numbers 8 to 20, intended for the monitor. Only 1 through 7 are seen in-game.

Location: 008F01D8

An animation depicting the A button controlling a cowbell sounding mechanisim.

Rhythm Games

Stage 01

Karate Man

Location: 008ACE84

A counter of some-kind, possibly depicting the input timing window.

Location: 008ACEE4

Another counter of some-kind, possibly a preliminary version of the flow meter

Location: 008ACD0C

Karate Joe looking quite depressed.

Location: 008ACF7C

Karate Joe looking smug after performing a high-flow punch. Only the low-flow variant of this animation can be seen in Remix 8, due to the fact that the game forces the flow meter back to 0 when exiting serious mode.

These are background graphics that go unused in the first Karate Man rhythm game. They can be activated if 0x089CFF05 is changed to 0x01 in a memory viewer.

• 

  This (non-karate) man appears when you get an input right...

• 

  ...while this other man appears when you either get an Early / Late on an input, or when you hit a rock when you don't have enough flow (you can tell how much flow you have with the hearts that appear in the normal game).

• 

  This last man appears if you might have missed an input.

Rhythm Tweezers

Locations: 008E8718, 008E87F8

Animations of a hair being plucked, both normally and barely. Likely meant for testing.

Location: 008E8920

Animation of a curly hair being pulled, also likely meant for testing.

Location: 008E8910

Tutorial text, stored as a graphic rather than raw text, which is what the game uses.

Marching Orders

Location: 008F124C, 008F288C, 00913930

All three variants of Marching Orders contain these unused animations of the marchers marching, likely used for testing. Notably, the Remix 7 variant is posed entirely different to the one that it uses proper, appearing more similar to the other variant's marching animation.

Location: 008F1454, 008F2A94, 00913B38

Likewise, all three variants also contain an unused animation of their respective marcher clapping. Where it'd be used in the game is anyone's guess, although it's worth noting that the animation directly preceeds the animation of the marchers bobbing in each variant.

Location: 008F13E4, 008F13BC

Morching Orders 2 is the only game where the marchers point, so these variants for Marching Orders go unused. These can actually be seen in action via an unused sequence for Marching Orders 2 utilizing the graphics from this variant.

Location: 00913AC8, 00913AA0

Likewise, the Remix 7 variant of Marching Orders also has unused pointing animations for the marchers.

Location: 008F2AB4

Marching Orders is the only game where the marchers bob to the music like this, so the Marching Orders 2 variant of the animation goes unused.

Location: 00913B58

Same applies to the Remix 7 variant.

Location: 00913CD0

The body of a Space Rabbit performing a dance similar to the one they do in WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!.

Location: 0091384C - 0091387A

What appears to be another dance routine performed by a Space Rabbit. This one doesn't come in animation form however, and looks to be unfinished.

Location: 00913D18

The head of a Space Rabbit gazzing upwards.

Location: 00913DF0

A Space Rabbit marching.

Location: 00913D58

A Space Rabbit returning to their default stance from each raised leg.

While not unused, the sprite for the front-facing head of the marchers from Marching Orders have hair and ears that go unseen due to them being obscured by the helmet graphic.

Spaceball

A few animations for this game appear with incorrect colors due to being assigned to the wrong palette line. Fixed versions will be placed besides them.

Raw	Fixed

Location: 008A1AF0

Sprites for an apple, likely used as a replacement for the baseball.

Location: 008A1B60

A smaller sprite of the apple, which would be intended for when the camera zoomed out past a certain point.

Location: 008A1B50

A star. Unused code exists for replacing the baseball with this, and said unused code wound up being used in the unused sequences for Spaceball 2.

Raw	Fixed

Location: 008A1C58

A sentient flowerpot, turning towards the camera.

Location: 008A1D78

The flowerpot making an expression.

Location: 008A1DA8

The flowerpot turning away from the camera.

Location: 008A1C80

The previous animations in the form of a single animation, likely made for testing. The flowerpot presumably would've served the same purpose as the Space Umpire, appearing as a normal decoration and occasionally turning towards the camera when it closes in on them, similar to how the Space Umpire acts in the game itself.

Raw	Fixed

Location: 008A1882

A duplicate of a frame used in the flowerpot's back turned animation.

Location: 008A1A66

A duplicate of a frame used in Space Umpire's idle animation.

The Clappy Trio

Location: 008E9D80

A lion cycling throught multiple expressions, then clapping.

Location: 008E9E90

Despite having data for two additional frames, the game only ever utilizes the first frame of the lion's smirking animation as their ready stance, leaving the rest of it unused.

Location: 008E9BFC

An unused frame of the lion's clapping animation with no motion lines/effects. Stored directly after the first two used frames.

Stage 02

Sneaky Spirits

Location: 008A0D38

An unused version of the animation for the ghost popping up from behind the wall

Location: 008A0F40

Multiple rain splashes, likely made for testing out the effect.

Iai Giri

Location: 008EBBC4

A trail of yokai behind a large mask

Rat Race

Location: 008FE334

Multiple sweat particles forming, spanning the entire group of rats. The player rat and the rat behind them sweats if they're not behind any dishes when they stop, so this animation likely would've been used in a similar context.

Location: 008FE0F4

A rat cheering in place.

Location: 008FE65C

A rat stumbling.

Location: 008FDDE8

A mouse hole.

Sick Beats

Location: 00931D24

An animation test for the doctor.

The★Bon Odori

Sprite of the girl on top of the tower without her red jacket or hands. While this sprite is in the final game, the jacket and railing of the tower cover up most of her torso. Her legs are completely obscured in-game

Stage 03

Mahō Tsukai

Two unseen frames meant for the wizard's spell cast animation.

Used	Full

The data for the animation includes these frames, but the game always resets to the idle animation before it can be seen.

A falling trail of magic, similar to the one seen in the prologue.

What appears to be a particle effect associated with the virus plant.

A gradually appearing set of 6 tiny flowers, similar to the tiny flowers that appear on the girl.

A spinning flower head.

A puff of smoke that likely would've been used for the girl if you spawned a virus plant.

A flower growing without any magic effects.

Bunny Hop

An icon for the A button by itself, as well as an A + D-Pad icon, likely meant for some kind of tutorial. Perhaps you originally had to press A + D-Pad for the high jumps.

The rabbit with a defeated expression, possibly when the player missed a jump.

An early version of the rabbit's jump frame where its missing the red spot around its eye. Promotional artwork for this game depicts the rabbit without it aswell. It may or may not be related to the previous sprite.

A small rabbit that would've been used for the final jump.

Sprite of the whale launching further back than it does in the game.

An unused frame of the whale's water sprout animation seen at the end of the game.

Space Dance

The squat animation played in reverse.

Speech bubbles for the right, down, and punch cues, likely spoken by Space Gramps.

Two dancers performing said cues, perhaps used to test spacing.

The previous animations in the form of a single animation.

An early version of parts A and B of the punch cue. Here, they appear to have jut their arms out more.

A Space Dancer looking dejected.

Duplicate frames of the Space Dancer's squat animation and Space Gramps' idle animation.

Stage 04

Night Walk

Leftovers from Play-Yan.

A series of platforms.

Two unused frames of the umbrella spawning from a box, with and without the platform.

Polyrhythm

An unused arrow graphic. It is not known what this would have been used for.

Stage 05

Hanabi

There are two unused sprites in Hanabi:

The string is slightly different on this bomb, the final version uses a more curvy string design.

This is the last frame of the explosion, for some reason this was never added in, probably by mistake.

Tap Trial

There are a few unused sprites meant to replace the giraffe for the different versions of Tap Trial, but only the original giraffe ever appears in the final game. Remix 7 would've utilized the dragon, and Tap Trial 2 might have, at one point, used the camel.

The versions of Tap Trial in Remix 5, Remix 7, and Remix 8 also have finished sprites for jump taps and triple taps, which are not used in the final game. The girl that is used in the Remix 7 version winks if you do a jump tap correctly. These sprites can be seen by editing the memory values at memory address 0x089D1CA1 in a hex editor, then opening the minigame Tap Trial. Changing it to 0x01 shows the Remix 8 version, 0x02 shows the Remix 7 version, and 0x04 shows the Remix 5 version.

• 

  Remix 7 jump tap sprite. Note the wink.

• 

  Remix 7 triple tap sprite.

• 

  Remix 7 jump tap sprite.

• 

  Remix 7 triple tap sprite.

• 

  Remix 8 jump tap sprite. The girl does a special pose.

• 

  Remix 8 triple tap sprite.

• 

  Remix 8 jump tap sprite. Resembles Tap Trial's regular sprite.

• 

  Remix 8 triple tap sprite. Also resembles Tap Trial's regular sprite.

• 

  Remix 5 jump tap sprite.

• 

  Remix 5 triple tap sprite.

• 

  Remix 5 jump tap sprite.

• 

  Remix 5 triple tap sprite.

Rhythm Toys

Neko Machine

To do: Technical stuff.

These graphics go unused in Neko Machine normally. They show different Japanese characters.

Japanese	Translation
耳はスピーカー ボタンはOBJにします	Ears are speakers Make button into OBJ

Rap Machine

Hidden in the background layer for this game is an early version of the "controller".

Menus and UI

Title Screen

A static sprite of the game's logo.

A shooting star.

Ratings Screen

Early versions of the OK and Try Again graphics.

This directly translates to "Norikan Check", with "Norikan" being the Japanese term for "Flow". This appears over the white oval with text that serves as the caption on the rating screen after completing certain unused games in the debug menu. With the exception of Live, playing any game in the debug menu that uses this screen will result in a crash.

Game Select

An early version of the medal counter.

To do: There are even earlier graphics for the Game Select in the graphics bank. See if there are any unused layouts or animations for these graphics. Especially that R-Games one. I put that one together as a sort of rush job, and just assumed that the palette I gave it was the correct one.

Graphics from an earlier version of the Game Select screen. "Rhythm IQ" was a working title for this game.

Café

An unused graphic of a dog found in the Café's tileset. It could be an early version of the Barista. However, the Barista was never shown in the final game (at least, not in the café itself).

Unused Code/Parameters

Spaceball

Unused Cue Settings

There are two unused settings for the cue command that spawn balls with different input timings. 0x00 spawns a ball that’s hit in 0.5 beats, and 0x03 spawns a high ball that’s hit in 1.5 beats. While 0x00 appears to play no sound effects when the ball is pitched or hit, the code internally defines a dummy sound, s_f_dummy_vol0, as the sound to play for those actions, suggesting that the cue was to get its own sound effects.

Unused Ball Type

The command that changes the sprite used for the ball has an unused setting (being 0x02) that swaps it for the unused star graphic. This can be seen in the unused Spaceball sequences.

Sneaky Spirits

Located at 0x00A7A20C is an unused subroutine that simply rests for 8 beats.

Iai Giri

Like Sneaky Spirits, there's an unused subroutine that does nothing for 8 beats, located at 0x00A053F0.

Sick Beats

To do: Are these really worth documenting here? It seems like both of these observations are the consequences of a function accepting an arbitrary value as an input, rather than something that was explicitly planned to be used.

The graphics function that controls the virus palettes has some unused values that change the viruses into other visible palettes.

There also exists unused hit counters, most of which turn the viruses invincible, but one makes the virus require 4 hits to be cleared.

Showtime

Unused Cue Settings

The cue command for this game has two unused settings that spawn a version of the white penguin requiring an input to be made in 1 beat, as apposed to the standard 2. Of these settings, 0x02 curiously spawns a non-swing variant, unfitting with the song used in-game. 0x03 meanwhile spawns what you’d expect.

Power Calligraphy

To do: Unused cue settings for the third stroke in 力 and fourth stroke in 心.

Ink Particle Effect

A function for this game exists that, when re-added, causes particles of ink to expand from and quickly contract into the brush. The function has a single parameter which controls how long the effect lasts, and likely would've coincided with the charge-up before a cue.

(Source: GENERIC)

Energy Disapate Effect

Code exists for clamping an animation of energy disapating to the coordinates of the hand and playing it when the hand finishes charging. It goes unused due to the animation not being made visible when it actually happens.

(Source: GENERIC)

Swing Subroutines

Subroutines for preparing the pages and drawing the 寸 symbol, 、symbol, and the face that appears at the end of the game have variants in swing rhythm made for Remix 4 that ultimately go unused. Their locations are as follows: 0x00A81478 (Prep 寸), 0x00A814FC (寸), 0x00A823B4 (Prep 、), 0x00A82414 (、), 0x00A82690 (Prep face), and 0x00A82714 (face).

Toss Boys

To do: Each one of them can do eachothers moves.

Unused Cue Settings

There exists unused cue settings for the trio (0x04 for Aka-chan, 0x05 for Ao-kun, and 0x06 for Kii-yan) that causes them to catch the ball, utilizing animations that otherwise go unused. After the ball is caught, inputs for whoever caught the ball no longer affect that character.

Unused Text

Japanese	Translation
なっとくの　せいかくさ	Great Accuracy
レッスン（じっせん８）	Lesson (Experiment 8)
リズムお習字 ２	Power Calligraphy 2

Some text that isn't used in-game. The first string uses similar phrasing to the results screen from the unused Rhythm Test, but it doesn't use Kanji characters, unlike the other text. There would have been an eighth Drum Lesson experiment, and Power Calligraphy doesn't have a sequel version in the final game, so these are unused. The second text string can be seen in the Debug Menu, and the third text string can be seen in the unused Gameplay History, also featured in the Debug Menu.