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Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 5th, 2017, 4:05 pm
by Blaziken257
Hello! I think I may have found unused level fanfare music in the SNES version of DKC3. To explain: the ROM offsets $C38D-C418 (in the US version, at least -- I haven't looked at other versions yet) contain a data structure of songs to be played in the hidden music test (accessed by pressing LRRLRRLRLR on the file select screen and then typing MUSIC). More specifically, this data structure is a list of the following:
  • A pointer to the name of the song (two bytes)
  • A main track (one byte)
  • A sub-track (one byte)
For example, the data for Dixie Beat is at $C38D-C390, the data for Crazy Calypso is at $C391-C394, etc.

The third byte of each of these entries contains the main track (for example, for the first song in the music test, it would be at $C38F), and this is later written to $08 in the CPU RAM (if you use a debugger such as the one found in bsnes-plus, and set a write breakpoint to $08, this breakpoint is hit every time the music changes). The fourth byte (e.g. $C390 for the first song) is a sub-track. Some main tracks have only one sub-track, but others (such as levels with life loss and ending themes) contain multiple. After tinkering with some values in these two bytes, I found that changing the main track (ROM offset $C38F) to #$2E and the sub-track (ROM offset $C390) to #$00 is some level end fanfare music that sounds different from any used level fanfare music.

To hear this for yourself, I released a patch (in both .ips and .bps format) which should be applied to a clean unheadered DKC3 USA ROM (you only need one of these, but I recommend .bps as it is error-proof):

- .bps: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jtzkgavop ... t_hack.bps
- .ips: http://www.mediafire.com/file/z4kndzibk ... t_hack.ips

Once you apply one of the patches, go to the music test screen, and select the first song (I replaced Dixie Beat with this unused music track, which should be obvious once you see it). For easy comparison, I also changed most of the other songs in the music test so that they play the level end fanfare music instead of the main level music (where applicable). (I did this by changing many of the sub-tracks. If you look at a hex editor, you'll notice that many offsets, such as $C398 (Cavern Caprice), $C39C (Water World), $C3A0 (Rockface Rumble), etc. were changed from 00 to 04, though a few, such as the boss sub-tracks, were changed to 01, because they don't contain the mid-level subtracks that normal levels do.) Some non-obvious songs, such as Crystal Chasm and Jangle Bells, also have their own fanfares that sound similar to the ones at the end of levels, so be sure to listen to those too!

Hopefully someone can verify that this is indeed unused... it does sound similar to some of the other level end fanfare music, but not exactly! Then again, someone may know something that I don't... but if this is unused, then it could mean that every DK game that Rare has ever made has unused music! (Well, except for most of the GBA games...)

And hopefully someone can make sense of this lengthy explanation...

Re: Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 6th, 2017, 12:44 am
by OneOf99
When you say english version you do mean the En,Fr version right? Or was there another english version of the game?

EDIT: Okay, so I tested it on that rom version and it worked.

This is very interesting! I think that this may have been a "base" for the creators to make the level variations off of. On a side note, was the Water World fanfare ever used? Every one of those levels ended in a normal cave, so I'm pretty sure that fanfare was used instead.

Re: Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 6th, 2017, 1:20 am
by Lanky Kong
OneOf99 wrote:When you say english version you do mean the En,Fr version right? Or was there another english version of the game?

EDIT: Okay, so I tested it on that rom version and it worked.

This is very interesting! I think that this may have been a "base" for the creators to make the level variations off of. On a side note, was the Water World fanfare ever used? Every one of those levels ended in a normal cave, so I'm pretty sure that fanfare was used instead.


If I remember correctly, the Water World track keeps playing even on the cave exit, so technically this fanfare version is used.

Re: Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 6th, 2017, 2:08 am
by OneOf99
Oh ok, I see. I guess I just didn't remember it.

Re: Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 6th, 2017, 2:31 am
by Blaziken257
OneOf99 wrote:When you say english version you do mean the En,Fr version right? Or was there another english version of the game?


I actually said the US version, which was intended to disambiguate from the European version. I haven't looked at the latter version, so that's why I tried to make it clear that the patch should be used on the US version.

Re: Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 6th, 2017, 3:15 am
by OneOf99
I actually said the US version, which was intended to disambiguate from the European version. I haven't looked at the latter version, so that's why I tried to make it clear that the patch should be used on the US version.


RIP my reading skills. This explains my Language Arts grade :lol:

Re: Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 6th, 2017, 5:11 am
by Mattrizzle
That version of the fanfare plays on a win screen that only appears when a player beats Kastle KAOS in two-player contest mode. (Presumably, as I've never played through the aforementioned mode in DKC3) EDIT: It is used. See this video: https://youtu.be/kI68lRonMek?t=43s
If you use PAR Code B28E8D84 on the US version, this screen will appear instead of the Select Game menu when it is accessed from the Title Screen:
Donkey Kong Country 3 (U)-Player One Wins!.png
Donkey Kong Country 3 (U)-Player One Wins!.png (9.32 KiB) Viewed 21819 times


If PAR Code 7E04C601 is used in conjunction with the code above, Player 2 will be the active player, and the "Player Two Wins!" variant will appear instead:
Donkey Kong Country 3 (U)-Player Two Wins!.png
Donkey Kong Country 3 (U)-Player Two Wins!.png (8.2 KiB) Viewed 21820 times

Re: Unused level end fanfare music in DKC3?

PostPosted: January 8th, 2017, 3:45 pm
by Blaziken257
Well, I never considered that this music would be used in the two-player contest mode, because I've never played that mode before. So, I learned something new from this thread. Nice find! Though, I hope I didn't get people's hopes up with the false alarm of discovering unused music. I wonder if DKC and DKC2 have similar "Player __ Wins" screens...