Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time & Darkness

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time Explorers of Darkness
Developer: Chunsoft Publishers: The Pokémon Company (JP), Nintendo (INT) Platform: Nintendo DS Released in JP: September 13, 2007 Released in US: April 20, 2008 Released in EU: July 4, 2008 Released in AU: June 19, 2008 Released in KR: December 11, 2008 Released in TW: September 13, 2007 This game has unused animations. This game has unused areas. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused cinematics. This game has unused items. This game has unused abilities. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has regional differences. This game has anti-piracy features. This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article This game has a notes page

This game/console's online features are no longer supported. While this game/console's online features were once accessible, they are (as of May 20, 2014) no longer officially supported and online-exclusive features may be documented as now-unseen content.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness are the second pair of games in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon sub-series, following Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team.

See also Explorers of Sky, which is the polished and enhanced third version.

To do: So. Many. Rescue Team Leftovers. Get the unused items to work. A metric ton of unused text is still undocumented here. More unused graphics and sprites exist. Add more regions for these AR codes. More debug features are known to exist. See if any of it can still be accessed, and add it. A lot of stuff here needs to be checked in Sky for differences, and then added to that page.

Sub-Pages

Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Notes

Debug Menu So many options that they needed their own page.

Debug Rooms Do the Mankey Dance.

Unused Dungeons Test Dungeon, dummies... and Bidoof!

Unused Pokémon Turns out Shaymin was here the whole time.

Unused Graphics Various dungeon tilesets, miscellaneous sprites and more.

Unused Portraits Rescue Team leftovers galore, as well as some other surprises...

Unused Animations Many more Rescue Team leftovers, with a light sprinkling of new.

Unused Moves Pokémon used is watching!

Unused Audio The music and sounds that didn't make the cut.

Unused Skills

Multitype

Arceus's ability, Multitype, exists dummied out within the game's data. While it has the usual placeholder text of "$$$" as its name and a blank description in the English version, in the Japanese version the original name of
"マルチタイプ" was retained, and it includes a proper description:

じょうきょうに
よって タイプが へんかする

Interestingly, the ability's description in the Japan-only Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games released on WiiWare, which did include Arceus, appears to have been copied from its unused description in Explorers of Time and Darkness.

Unused IQ Skills

To do: In Sky, Parry Expert has a similar effect to the Pass Scarf, while the other skills (including PP Checker) do nothing. Is Time and Darkness any different?

The following IQ skills have no surviving descriptions in either English or Japanese. PP Checker was previously used in Rescue Team, where it would prevent an AI-controlled Pokémon from using any move with no PP left, or any linked move with 1 PP left; its logic is now carried out by Exclusive Move-User.. All of the others were created (and scrapped) during the development of Explorers.

Japanese	English
ＰＰかくにん	PP Checker
カギあけ	Lock-Picker
けいかい	Cautious Creeper
うけながし	Parry Expert
ふたいてん	No-Defeatist
しんのちから	True Powerist

Unused Tactics

To do: In Sky, "Keep your distance" keeps its fully functional effect from Rescue Team, while the rest are unimplemented and use identical behavior to "Let's go together". Verify if Time and Darkness are the same.

All of the following tactics are unused leftovers from Rescue Team. Out of these, "Keep your distance" is the only tactic that was used in the previous game. Curiously, both "Group safety" and "Keep your distance" received updated descriptions in both English and Japanese.

Name (JP)	Name (EN)	Description (JP)	Description (EN)
いっち だんけつ	All for one	できるだけ１ひきで こうどうせず なかまたちと かたまって こうどうする	The Pokémon will try to avoid being alone. It will try to stay with the team.
そろえば あんしん	Group safety	できるだけ１ひきで こうどうせず おなじしゅるいの なかまと かたまって こうどうする	The Pokémon will try to avoid being alone. It will try to stay with friends of its own species.
はなれて ていさつ	Keep your distance	まったく こうげきをしないで てきポケモンと きょりをおいて いどうする	The Pokémon will try to keep its distance from enemies. It still stays on the move, if necessary, and won't attack in any way.

Unused Items

To do: Verify the attack power of the Gold Fang, Cacnea Spike and Corsola Twig in Time/Darkness. They are verified in Sky as using the unique 7, 10 and 15 values respectively.

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: As can be seen on Explorers of Sky's page, there is much more to this. It seems an unchecked validity flag is responsible for turning the unused items into Plain Seed clones. Finding some way to enable the items' validity flags in Time/Darkness would be very much worth it, as numerous unused items got overwritten in Sky.

There are many spots in the item list that were likely occupied by unused items at some point in development. Unfortunately, it appears that the developers cleaned out the list very thoroughly before the game's release, replacing all but three unused items with rather unremarkable placeholder Plain Seed clones. All of these clones are more-or-less the same as one another: They are referred to as a Plain Seed in the inventory, and have the placeholder text "$$$" in both their mini-description and full description. It is edible like the regular Plain Seed item, but when thrown, it deals 1 damage to its target, rather than being eaten. The only invalid item which has anything different is 0x000, which instead has the text "No Information Available." in its full description.

The only exceptions are three straight throwing items that were left in the game, which also use a unique sprite and color palette combination; the Gold Fang, Cacnea Spike and Corsola Twig. These three items were previously attainable in Blue Rescue Team through the Unknown Dungeon feature, but cannot normally be obtained in any of the Explorers games. Curiously, they have all been updated to use a higher attack power, which along with their unusually intact state suggests that the items were cut later in development.

The hexadecimal IDs for all of these items are listed below. To see them for yourself, use this AR Code (US):

Time	Darkness
94000130 FFFB0000 1229AEF4 00000??? D2000000 00000000	94000130 FFFB0000 1229AE34 00000??? D2000000 00000000

Replace "???" with the hexadecimal ID for any of the items, then press Select while in-game to overwrite the first slot of your Treasure Bag with the item.

The IDs for the useable throwing items are: 0x004, 0x005 and 0x006. The invalid items can be spawned by using the following IDs: 0x000, 0x00B through 0x00F, 0x02B, 0x044, 0x062, 0x068 through 0x06B, 0x071, 0x072, 0x074 through 0x076, 0x089, 0x08A, 0x0A6 through 0x0AC, 0x0AF through 0x0B1, 0x0B3 through 0x0B5, 0x0B8, 0x0B9, 0x0C2, 0x0C6, 0x0CD, 0x0DB, 0x0E0, 0x0E2, 0x0EC, 0x102, 0x103, 0x125 through 0x12C, 0x144, 0x153, 0x159, 0x15D, 0x161, 0x168, 0x169, 0x16B, 0x301 and 0x339.

In addition, all items beyond ID 0x3E5 are placeholder Plain Seeds, likely as a result of a failsafe.

Unused Text

Unused Dungeon Dialogue

There are a large number of personality groups used for in-dungeon dialogue. The guest Pokémon that temporarily join the player during the story each have their own unique personality group as well, and all include a single line (except for Cresselia, who has three lines) for leveling up. Guest Pokémon are unable to gain experience or use Joy Seeds, leaving these lines unused.

Unusually, while Cresselia switches to personality group 15 after recruitment in the Japanese versions of Time and Darkness, Cresselia instead keeps using group 26 even after recruitment in the international versions, meaning the translated lines are used. This change would be carried over to all versions of Explorers of Sky. All of the other Japanese lines apart from Chatot's would eventually be used in Sky's Special Episodes, but retranslations would be used in English rather than the lines seen here.

Personality Group	Text (JP)	Text (EN)
21 (Grovyle)	よし！ レベルアップだ！	There! Leveled up!
22 (Chatot)	やった♪ レベルアップだ♪	Well! ♪ I've leveled up! ♪
23 (Bidoof)	やったぁ！ レベルアップでゲス〜！	Aw, shucks! I've gone and leveled up!
25 (Shiny Celebi)	ウフフッ！ レベルアップだわ！	Giggle! You made me level up!
26 (Cresselia)	うん！ レベルアップしたわ！ よし！ レベルアップ！ レベルアップです！	(Used)

Unused Control Characters

The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games have control characters which can add graphics to a textbox or alter the text. While many of them are used generously throughout the game, there are a few that remain unseen.

Unused Color Set Characters

The special characters [CS:A] through [CS:Z] are internally used in the game's messages to change the color of text. The character accepts any capital letter as a valid color, but a few of these letters are never actually used in the game.

The control character itself is just plain text, so one can view these colors by adding the specified control character to any text in the game using a hex editor (just make sure to add [CR] to the end of the string, this resets the color and things can break if it's missing). You can also use the following AR code to see them, but don't save your game with this on, or it will be permanent (US):

Time	Darkness
022A333B 5D??3A53 022A3337 435B0000 022A333F 46524354	022A327B 5D??3A53 022A3277 435B0000 022A327F 46524354

Replace "??" with the hexadecimal for any of the listed letters below. This changes your Hero's name to "TCRF", displayed with whichever color you picked. It's worth mentioning that the "Message Color" option in the ADEBUG room has a list of some of the font colors and their usage, which includes some of these unused characters, hinting at what they may have originally been intended for.

Hex	Color	Notes
0x41	[CS:A]	Listed in ADEBUG's "Message Color" as "Identified Item". However, it is not used anywhere else. Its color is the same as [CS:I], which is used for items.
0x4C	[CS:L]	While this isn't used in normal gameplay, it is present in the unused placeholder Personality Test text, as well as the "Ludicolo" in Lombre's text in the T00P01 Debug Room. This is a green color, although it's ever-so-slightly darker/bluer than [CS:M], which is used for move names.
0x4F	[CS:O]	Not present in any text in the game, used or unused. This color is unlike anything ever seen in regular gameplay, being a deep mossy green.
0x51	[CS:Q]	Not present in any text in the game, used or unused. This color is similar to but ever-so-slightly darker than [CS:Y], which is used for your Hero's name.
0x53	[CS:S]	Listed in ADEBUG's "Message Color" as "Multiple Items Selected". However, this is not used anywhere else. While this is the color used for the background when selecting multiple items in Kangaskhan Storage, doing this doesn't change the color of its text.
0x54	[CS:T]	Listed in ADEBUG's "Message Color" as "Transparent". However, this is not used anywhere else. This makes the text completely invisible, even if you enter a dungeon and view it with the semi-transparent menu background. Doesn't seem like it'd be very useful.
0x55	[CS:U]	Listed in ADEBUG's "Message Color" as "Unidentified Item". However, this is not used anywhere else. Identified and Unidentified items are a mechanic in a few other Mystery Dungeon games, such as Shiren the Wanderer, so this may be an indication that the mechanic was considered for this series as well. This is the exact same color as [CS:F], which is used for recruits.

Developer Emblems

Also present in the files are these two graphics:

The first one is called by the control character [M:D0]. This kanji symbol means "Placeholder", and quite fittingly, it is placed at the beginning of a few placeholder lines of text in the files. The three places where it is used are: the "Event Transmission 1" and "Event Transmission 2" lines, which are placeholder titles for Wonder Mail obtained through events, and the "Did you need something?" string, which seems to appear whenever the game tries to call a message that doesn't exist.

The second one is called by [M:D1]. This kanji means "Unimplemented", and is prefixed to many lines that relate to scrapped features. There are way too many instances of this one to list them all, but some examples are: many of the unused dungeons, many placeholder talking messages for party members, and some error messages. There are also several parts of the move/item/etc. name lists that seem to have been overwritten with several copies of this icon.

While both of these control characters and their graphics still exist in the English version, the graphics themselves can only load into textboxes in the Japanese version. In the English releases, if one of these control characters is present, it will simply be ignored.

Exploration Results

All of the unused results messages from Rescue Team are still present and equally unused in these games, but there's also a single new one:

Text (JP)	Text (EN)
ゆうばくにまきこまれて たおれた	was caught in an explosion and fainted.

This is internally assigned to damage from the ability Aftermath, but said damage always leaves the target with at least 1 HP remaining in the final game, so the message can never be seen.

(Source: TheZZAZZGlitch (video))

Save Data Formatting

In addition to the "Deleting the saved game data" message, there are also some other messages which cannot normally be seen:

Deleting all saved game data.
Please don't turn off the power.

This message is displayed after selecting "Break data" from the Debug Menu.

Clearing all saved game data.
Please don't turn off the power.

This message is displayed after selecting "Initial product data" from the Debug Menu.

The saved game data has been destroyed.

Seen after selecting "Break data" from the Debug Menu and waiting for it to finish.

The saved game data has been cleared.

Seen after selecting "Initial product data" from the Debug Menu and waiting for it to finish.

Oddities

Swapped Music Tracks

While they appear to be simply numbered when browsing the game's filesystem, the BGM tracks within the game also include more descriptive and apparently truncated 15-character name strings. A handful of these internal names are mismatched with their used locations, heavily suggesting some significant reshuffling of the game's music took place later in development.

The official titles for these tracks are sourced from the Sky Jukebox in Explorers of Sky; none of the tracks had official titles prior to Sky's release.

Filename	Internal Name	Sky Jukebox Title	Notes
bgm0045	B_DUN_KIZAKINOM	Random Dungeon Theme 2	The Japanese name for Treeshroud Forest is "Kizaki no Mori" (キザキのもり). This track is instead used as the theme for the Marowak Dojo mazes and Oran Forest, which are both roles it would lose in Explorers of Sky in favor of the previously unused Makuhita Dojo remix and "Blizzard Island Rescue Team Medley" respectively. Its only other used location is as a randomly occurring track in Midnight Forest.
bgm0055	B_DUN_KISEKINOU	Random Dungeon Theme 1	The Japanese name for Miracle Sea is "Kiseki no Umi" (きせきのうみ). This track is a slower rearrangement of bgm0054 (Surrounded Sea), used in the preceding dungeon. It is instead used as a randomly occurring track in Marine Resort, Serenity River and Zero Isle North.
bgm0060	B_DUN_SORANOSAK	Miracle Sea	The Japanese name for Spacial Rift is "Sora no Sakeme" (そらのさけめ). Spacial Rift instead reuses Chasm Cave, which is arguably a better fit for this dungeon and its role in the story.
bgm0061	B_DUN_SORANOSAK	Treeshroud Forest	This is a slower rearrangement of bgm0060. Deep Spacial Rift instead reuses Sealed Ruin.

Regional Differences

Explorers of Time Title Screen

Japan

South Korea

US/Australia

Europe (English)

Explorers of Darkness Title Screen

Japan

South Korea

US/Australia

Europe (English)

• Curiously, all 4 versions use a different Time Gear graphic for their game logos.
• Like Rescue Team, the European version uses a different font for the series' logo.

Animations

In the Japanese version, Entei mistakenly uses a placeholder sprite for its up-facing charge animation, despite including the correct sprite in the game. This was fixed in all international versions and the placeholder was removed. The placeholder reads "エンテー", a false spelling of Entei (エンテイ) in Japanese.

Japan	International

In the Japanese version, one of Suicune's side-facing walking sprites got cut off by 2 pixels on the rear side. This was fixed in all international versions.

Japan	International

The intended animations and sprites were previously present in Rescue Team and are used in those games without issues, suggesting mistakes were made while importing the sprites into Explorers.

Script Differences

The European English script, while mostly unaltered compared to the US English script, changed an unassuming line spoken by Corphish in the m16a0401 cutscene in G01P04A, which takes place at the Wigglytuff's Guild a day after the hero and partner get rescued from the Crystal Lake:

Japan	US	Europe (English)
ヘイ！ エムリットたちは　ぶじなのかい？	Hey, hey! Are Azelf and his friends all right?	Hey, hey! Are Mesprit and his friends all right?

While the Japanese line refers to Mesprit (エムリット) as well as Uxie and Azelf indirectly, the line in the US version instead refers to Azelf as well as Uxie and Mesprit indirectly. The incomplete attempt to revert this change in the European version led to a more significant error: Corphish now refers to Mesprit using "his", despite Mesprit consistently being referred to in feminine terms otherwise. This error would subsequently sneak its way into both the US and European versions of Explorers of Sky as well.

Gendered Hero Text

To do: check each instance where the hero speaks very thoroughly, it's possible I may have missed a few scenes in my search

In the Japanese, Korean, French, Italian and Spanish scripts of the game, the hero has two separate sets of dialogue, which is chosen based on their gender. In the English versions, these two sets are still present in the files, and the functionality that switches the dialogue still works; however, the two sets are almost always identical, meaning that the multiple sets are essentially unused.

That being said, there are a few cases where they are different, but they are incredibly minor and barely change the meaning of the dialogue at all. These examples may either be a simple oversight on the part of the translators, or they may be evidence that the two sets were intended to be more utilized in these versions, but were ultimately kept the same. There are also a few cases in the various debug rooms where the sets differ, but this is likely to be a holdover from the Japanese versions.

The following lines of dialogue are the only lines where the two sets differ:

• Any text where the hero is being referred to in the third-person will switch between "he/him" and "she/her" as needed. In practice, this only happens within the m12d1201 cutscene in D01P11A, which is the cutscene on the beach where the partner explains the hero's situation to Dusknoir.
• within the m01a0702 cutscene in D01P11B, which is the cutscene that plays after first completing Beach Cave:

Male	Female
(Whoa! What should I do? I'm getting recruited out of the blue!)	(Wah! What should I do? I'm getting recruited out of the blue!)

• Within the m26a0401 cutscene in P13P01A, which is the ending cutscene:

Male	Female
(...All right...) (Finally...) (The time has finally arrived...)	(...OK...) (Finally...) (The time has finally arrived...)

• Within the ADEBUG debug room:

Male	Female
(I'm disappointed but I'm a boy.)	(I'm a girl...)

• Within the T00P01 debug room:

Male	Female
Who are you? Everyone: We are... Everyone: [hero] and [partner]! [hero] Male	Who are you? Everyone: We are... Everyone: [hero] and [partner]! [hero] Female

Shadow Ball's Secondary Effect

The move Shadow Ball is intended to have a chance to lower the target's Special Defense. However, in the Japanese version, the move erroneously lowers the target's regular Defense stat instead. It correctly lowers the Special Defense stat in the US release, although it's worth noting that the official English Prima guide still mistakenly claims that the move affects the regular Defense stat.

Friend Rescue Screen

The Friend Rescue screen uses a string which tells the player which game the mail came from. In the Japanese version, the names for each version are only two characters (とき for Time, やみ for Darkness), so they could fit this string on the top-right corner, on the "Title" line. The English names are quite a bit longer, so they were moved further down onto the "Client" line.

Icons

The international versions use more polished glyphs for the L and R buttons. This change would be carried over to all regional versions of Explorers of Sky.

Japan	International

The European versions changed the icon of the touch screen button used for confirming menu selections from a maru (〇) to a checkmark. This change would similarly be carried over to both the US and European versions of Explorers of Sky.

Japan/US/South Korea	Europe

E-Mail Functionality

To do: Check the Korean version, which appears from a glance to have disabled the e-mail functionality as well.

The Japanese and US versions included the ability to send Friend Rescue requests and receive Friend Rescue notifications via e-mail, which has been disabled entirely in the European version. Despite this, all of the related strings can still be found in the European ROM and were additionally translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish.

While the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection servers have long since shut down, present-day players of the US versions of Time, Darkness as well as Sky can use custom servers to restore this functionality.

Anti-Piracy

The scrambled graphics, in Beach Cave in this case.

The Korean version of the game utilizes the DS Protect anti-piracy library to ensure that it is not being run off a flashcart or emulator. If any of the DS Protect checks fail, the game performs the following behavior to render the game unplayable:

• When starting a new save file, the game will randomly crash at several points throughout the beginning of the game. The currently known points where it may crash are: Selecting a partner, entering Beach Cave for the first time, initiating the Beach Cave Boss Battle, and entering Wigglytuff's Guild for the first time. Based on testing, it appears that the scene where you enter Wigglytuff's Guild in particular will always produce a crash, although this may have just been bad luck.
• If you instead load the game with a working save file, you may randomly crash when attempting to enter any dungeon.
• When in a dungeon, the graphics may randomly decide to scramble upon entering a floor. This only lasts for one floor, and does not seem to have any other side effects.

This version of the game uses a very early version of the DS Protect library, sometimes dubbed version 1.00 or 1.02, which is the earliest recorded version of such, making the Korean version of the game one of the first games to use this library.