Equinox

Equinox
Also known as: Solstice II (JP) Developer: Software Creations Publishers: Epic/Sony (JP), Sony Imagesoft (US/EU) Platform: SNES Released in JP: November 12, 1993 Released in US: March 1994 Released in EU: March 25, 1994 This game has unused areas. This game has a hidden developer message. This game has unused graphics.

To do: Regional Differences

Equinox is a sequel to the NES puzzle/adventure game, Solstice. The isometric game play is similar to its predecessor, but this time there are more settings, weapons, and bosses.

Unused Graphics

An unused tower-like structure that was found with the overworld graphics.

This Troll sprite was undoubtedly supposed to have been used for when he falls from the cloud to the ground. However, when he appears from the cloud in the game, he is already in his walking animation loop, and this frame is never seen.

This is a Ghost Ship porthole in which you can see another room on the other side of the glass. It's obvious that this was supposed to have been used on walls that have adjacent rooms, which would have made more sense, but the porthole that shows water on the outside was used in every instance instead.

This lantern should have adorned the doorways in the Ghost Ship, but due to a programming error, it was left unused.

The image on the left shows what the doorways look like in the final game. A mistake in the programming causes the wrong tiles to appear above the frame, resulting in a jagged-looking mismatch. The image on the right shows what the frame should have looked like with the correct lantern tile placed above it.

This strange little unused star and a part to make an identical larger star can be found amongst the dungeon item graphics. This was probably intended for some kind of visual effect, possibly when spell casting.

It may have looked something like this when animated, but it looks unfinished and was left out.

Unused Room

The Missing Room 07-02

Room 07-02 of the Ghost Ship is empty and has no entrances or exits, leaving it completely inaccessible during normal game play. The room's intended purpose and reason it was not finished are unknown, but there is a large empty space in the Ghost Ship map where it could have fit. Though it has the ocean background of an upper deck room, the jagged walls indicate it was meant to be a lower deck room.

(Source: FlyingOmelette)

Audio Error

The BGM for Sonia's Fortress is incorrectly programmed. When the song loops back to the beginning, one channel has a portamento effect that is never cancelled, resulting in samples getting slurred when changing notes. As this occurs on a channel primarily used to echo a louder channel, this is usually not that noticeable; however, listening closely, it is quite easy to hear the difference when compared to the first loop of the song.

Hidden Message

The message "Ste & John were ere ok" can be found scrawled out amongst the game's background tiles. Ste and John refer to Ste Pickford and John Pickford of Software Creations, the game's developer. Note that this message was removed from the Japanese version because the symbols for the Japanese dialogue fill up the space where it was.

We asked Ste Pickford about it, and he provided a little elaboration on its likely origins, as well as the original art files used for the fonts.