Recently I programmed a level viewer for Pocky & Rocky (SNES) and was delighted to find that the final level,
Stage 6: Battle With Black Mantle has an unused area not seen in this (presumably) screenshot-stitched map by MagnetiC.
this is my output:
the only rooms you can actually see in-game are these highlighted here:
So here's the unused corridor:
and its background:
and my best-guess estimates of the three middle rooms
Very interesting! There are unused enemy graphics in the bank assigned to that level, but we weren't able to spawn them anywhere sadly. I was doing analysis with Random Talking Bush and they found this interesting bit too:
There's traces of an unused stage in the first Pocky & Rocky as well by the looks of it.
Setting the selected byte to "6" on the level select and moving the selection up or down makes "Stage 7" appear.
Can't be selected regardless, and forcing the stage value to be anything higher makes it default to Stage 6.
...but if you change it during the map transition...
Which is definitely different than the actual Stage 6's.
Apparently the Black Mantle's Revenge is making the game crash. 😛
Haven't gotten to parsing the level data for either game so I don't know if any actual unused stages exist yet
This is all pioneer work, by the way, so you won't find this info on the Cutting Room Floor wiki
Nonetheless, how do you feel about "secret maps" in general? Super Mario Bros. 3 might be the most known about, or at least I think a lot of people know about the unused levels in the game... Do you know of any cool unused maps? What's your favorite?