Proto:Secret of Evermore

This page details one or more prototype versions of Secret of Evermore.

To do: Anything else of note?

Present among a collection of loose EPROMs recovered by the Video Game History Foundation (and released by SNES Central in 2021) was a partial prototype of Secret of Evermore, more specifically chip 2 of 6. While none of the other chips have turned up as of this writing, there's enough correspondences between the data available and the second sixth of the final ROM to get a partial picture of the game as it neared completion.

NPC Differences

The final game features two "Alchemist" NPC types differing only by palette (one with a purple sash and white toga, the other with a yellow sash and green toga). Only one is present in the prototype. Though the palettes themselves haven't been found, the proto alchemist shares a palette pointer with many other sprites, like the purple-sashed variety in the final.

Considered together with the unused "Modronius" NPC, it seems that Strong Heart and Madronius were originally intended to have distinct appearances, with all other unnamed alchemists wearing the purple sash.

Enemy Differences

There are five enemies in the final game which are completely absent in the prototype: the Rat, Mechaduster, Tentacle, Tiny Tentacle, and Dark Toaster. The Mechaduster and Dark Toaster appear during the final boss battle. The Rat and Tentacles are actually unused, but were surely intended to be used in Omnitopia instead of the weaker versions present there.

There are seven enemies with stat changes, all of which are in Omnitopia. It seems clear that this was the last section of the game to be worked on.

Enemy		HP	Attack	Defense	Magic Defense	Hit Rate	Experience	Item Drop Rate
Red Jelly Ball	Proto	100	45	120	0	50	600	8/128
	Final	100	110	240	0	50	600	8/128
Neo Greeble	Proto	300	117	200	0	0	300	8/128
	Final	300	117	200	0	0	500	8/128
Mechaduster	Proto	50	85	160	57	25	50	8/128
	Final	600	85	160	57	25	50	8/128
Raptor	Proto	4000	245	400	51	75	24	128/128
	Final	4000	225	400	51	75	24	128/128
Eye of Rimsala	Proto	10000	205	400	0	60	1050	100/128
	Final	6000	175	400	0	100	1050	128/128
Magmar	Proto	30000	170	360	59	100	50000	0/128
	Final	25000	170	360	0	110	50000	0/128
Carltron's Robot	Proto	20000	220	360	59	100	100000	0/128
	Final	30000	220	360	60	110	100000	0/128

Only three differences have been found outside of Omnitopia so far:

• The Mad Monk's attack in the prototype has no special properties, whereas in the final it can induce the Confound status. In fact, it seems that the script for an enemy attack to inflict confounding had not yet been implemented at all.
• Both types of rat used in the final can inflict plague, but in the proto only the lighter-colored ones found in Ebon Keep can. (At least, the data says that some rats can inflict plague, though I could never get this to happen...)
• Finally, in the prototype Aquagoth drops 1000 jewels. For whatever reason, in the final this was changed to a scripted event awarding the player 5000 jewels and some honey, introducing a minor bug: no check is made for whether the player can hold more honey, allowing the usual maximum to be exceeded.

Other

The following text appears at 0x4F173:

Here, have some ingredients! Fine, have all the spells too... Jerk!

It is not clear whether there was some way to trigger this snippy reward in the prototype.