Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team/Unused Graphics

This is a sub-page of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team.

To do: There are many unused special characters for the dialogue font. List and rip them. There are also Japanese characters still present in the US and EUR version; rip them and explain why their colors are glitched if forced to appear in non-Japanese versions.

Loaded in VRAM

These graphics are loaded in VRAM while the game is running, but remain unused.

Japanese Freehand Writing (Europe Red Rescue Team)

Some freehand Japanese writing and cross marks are loaded in VRAM when displaying the European language-selection screen. These are the first-row characters of the Hiragana alphabet.

Title Background (US Red Rescue Team)

Full Title Screen	Title Background

The title background, which is different for the US version only, has the lower part unseen.

Unused Dungeon Tiles

Some dungeons have alternative ground and wall tiles that are never used:

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  Thunderwave Cave, ground

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  Silent Chasm, ground

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  Mt. Thunder Peak, wall

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  Mt. Thunder Peak, wall

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  Western Cave, ground, B1F-B27F

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  Western Cave, ground, B28F-B39F

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  Wish Cave, ground, B1F-B13F

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  Buried Relic, ground, B21F-B50F

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  Buried Relic, ground, B51F-B99F

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  Northern Range, ground, 1F-7F

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  Desert Region, ground

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  Southern Cavern, wall, B1F-B23F

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  Southern Cavern, wall, B1F-B23F

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  Southern Cavern, ground, B1F-B23F

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  Northwind Field, ground, 20F-30F

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  Solar Cave, ground, B1F-B6F

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  Murky Cave, ground

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  Rock Path, ground

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  Water Maze, ground

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  Ice Maze, ground

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  Poison Maze, ground

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  Rescue Team Maze, ground

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  Mt. Faraway, ground, 30F-39F

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  Purity Forest, ground, 13F-20F

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  Purity Forest, ground, 30F-43F

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  Purity Forest, ground, 44F-60F

• 

  Purity Forest, ground, 80F-99F

(Source: SilverDeoxys563)

HUD Font

Basic HUD characters, many of which were used in the prototype's various debug menus.

Note that this image doesn't include the whole set of characters, as some are actually used and thus were removed manually in order to not show them here.

Item Sprite

This sprite is loaded in VRAM after entering a dungeon, along with all the other item sprites. In the image above, it is represented using all 13 item sprite palettes. These sprites look like gears.

"FOR HP" Indicator

This sprite is loaded in VRAM after entering a dungeon, but during gameplay it's replaced by the HP damage/cure amount or the "MISS" notice. It was probably intended to indicate a placeholder during development.

Shadow-On-Water Animations

Unused	Used

These animations are loaded in VRAM after entering a dungeon, along with all the other Pokémon shadows. There are three sizes of shadow in the game, but when standing on water, only the big ones are used regardless of the size of the respective shadow when on the ground. Also, these seem to be early designs when compared to the used ones.

Unused Icy Wind Sprites

To do: Verify this using Rescue Team's animation data alone and replace the loose sprites with a proper GIF of this animation. Since the animation data in Explorers is an unused leftover from Rescue Team, it is very unlikely to exhibit any differences.

These sprites are loaded into VRAM upon using the Icy Wind move, but remain unused. While the animation cannot be seen in Rescue Team, including in the prototype's animation viewer, animation data from Explorers of Time and Darkness (where they are similarly unused) reveals that the scrapped animation is modeled after the move's hit animation in the Generation III mainline games.

Found Only in ROM

These graphics are present only in the ROM, with no known use in the game; thus, some are probably represented with incorrect palettes.

To do: find out the correct palattes using GameShark or reverse engineering.

Unused Dungeon Tilesets

This game has several dungeon tilesets that are not used during normal gameplay, most of which were eventually used in the next installment in the series, Explorers of Time and Darkness.

Tileset 0x01		An early version of Pitfall Valley's tileset. Used on the first floor of an unused dungeon, Autopilot. Was later used for Tiny Meadow in Explorers.
Tileset 0x14		An early version of Purity Forest's tileset. Was later used for Final Maze B23F in Explorers.
Tileset 0x16		A palette swap of Waterfall Pond that could've been an early version of Southern Cavern's tileset. This tileset is included in Explorers, but remains unused.
Tileset 0x1A		An unused forest tileset (a palette swap of 0x14) that's used on the third floor of an unused dungeon, Boss 3. Was later used for Lush Prairie in Explorers.

(Source: SunakazeKun)

(Preview Images: SilverDeoxys563)

Alternative HUD Font

Japan	US/Australia/Europe/South Korea

These HUD characters are found right after the ones loaded in VRAM. In the US, Australian, European, and Korean versions, all the Japanese characters have a different background color and don't have anti-aliasing. The Japanese variant of this font was used in the debug menu for dungeons in the debug-enabled build. The kanji characters are unavailable even in the aforementioned build, but the dummied-out KANJI FONT option may refer to them.

Story Progress Badges

These four sprites are found right after the other Legendary Pokémon mini-portraits, which indicates the progress of the game story when loading the save.

Japanese Writing (Red Rescue Team)

This Japanese writing is found right after the item sprites in Red Rescue Team. It says "around this area".

Numbered Tags

These graphics are found after the above writing in Red Rescue Team, and after the item sprites in Blue Rescue Team.

Unused Text Icon

There are many text icons in the dialogue text font, but this one is completely unused. Also, it is unclear what it was meant to represent.

Unused Floor Screen Characters

To do: List unused characters for Japanese version.

These are the unused characters for the screen showed when entering a dungeon floor. Interestingly, there is no lowercase "q".

Unused Portraits

Since Meowth, Psyduck, Machop, Cubone, Eevee, and Skitty cannot be selected as the partner, certain portraits have been left unused and cannot be displayed normally without the use of partner modifier codes. They would later be made available as the partner in the remake, Rescue Team DX.

Meowth and Skitty's original "angry" and "teary-eyed" portraits would eventually see use in Explorers of Time and Darkness, while their other portraits and all of Eevee's would finally be used in Explorers of Sky. Notably, all of Eevee's portraits would receive a palette overhaul, and its "laughing" portrait would be completely redrawn.

There is also a placeholder portrait found in Skarmory's data. The Japanese text is Skarmory's Japanese name, エアームド Eamudo, but the "a" is spelled with the kanji 阿 for some reason. A letter "B" is lower down in the graphic.

Meowth

Psyduck

Machop

Cubone

Eevee

Skitty

Skarmory

In addition, there is a duplicate of Rayquaza's portrait in the files, stored separately from the used one.

Hermie Hopperhead Penguin (Blue Rescue Team)

Found in sample.sbin inside Blue Rescue Team's files is what seems to be of art of a penguin from the extremely obscure PlayStation game Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic. The game was not only developed by a completely different company (specifically Yuke's before they would develop wrestling games) but does not appear to share any staff with Red and Blue Rescue Team, making this inclusion rather puzzling.

(ProjectPokemon: MegaMinerd)