Super Donkey

Super Donkey
Developer: Nintendo Platform: SNES This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has a development article This game has a prototype article

This game was never completed and/or given a public release. As a result of this, keep in mind that the developers might have used or deleted some of the content featured here, had the game actually been released.

This page or section details content from the July 2020 Nintendo Leak. Check the July 2020 Nintendo Leak category for more pages also sourced from this material.

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

Super Donkey is an unreleased platformer starring an unnamed proto-Rayman-like aviator/explorer who resembles the main character of Nintendo's earlier game Sky Skipper.

The game seems to have remained completely unknown until two builds were found as part of the July 2020 Nintendo leak: in other.7z/SFC/ソースデータ/ヨッシーアイランド/ツール/donkey_test as super_donkey_1.bin and super_donkey_2.bin, respectively. This page covers the latter build. Neither build has any sounds or music, and the onscreen timer is non-functional in both.

The game's name, the ROM headers (which refer to the game as "SUPER MARIOWORLD"), some unused sprites within the ROMs, and related material found elsewhere in the asset leak suggest that this was a Donkey Kong-related project with the aviator, Mario, and Link(!) being considered for protagonist roles. Notably, DK had also appeared in Sky Skipper as an enemy. File dates for the related material suggest that the available ROMs were built sometime in 1991 or 1992.

While it is not clear whether development continued past this point, various elements of Super Donkey would eventually be used in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, and it's believed that Yoshi's Island is what ultimately became of this project. Developer interviews for Yoshi's Island mention that the first two years of development were spent experimenting with ideas, in which one did stick - the idea of a game where even though the player can be hit by enemies the player doesn't die from doing so. Super Donkey has this element, and its available ROMs were found among the Yoshi's Island source code; further, a distinctly Donkey Kong-like enemy is present among the latter's internal assets and goes unused in the final game.

Sub-Pages

Development Info

Prototype Info

Unused Audio

To do: Rip the music from the ROM and post it by itself. A video isn't necessary. The samples, sounds, and Mozart music come from a prototype of A Link to the Past in the Super Donkey prototype 1 data.

An unused theme based on Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

(Source: LuigiBlood)

General

To do: Rip the cloud graphics for an additional, more focused comparison. Maybe even add the SMB1 and SMW styles' graphics to be more thorough.

• Performing a ground pound produces smoke clouds with faces, possibly meant to be a secondary attack. Notably, updated versions of these graphics would be used much later for the same move in the Super Mario Maker series.

Super Donkey	Super Mario Maker Series (Super Mario Bros. 3 style)

• If you fly offscreen while holding an object, the object itself is deleted while you're still in a holding position.
• While flying, you ignore all kinds of level collision.
• Pressing Start will turn the level palette sepia, as well as disable all level collision. Every pause toggles the collision. Doing this any further after the initial pause and unpause will further corrupt the level palette, until cycling back to the normal level palette after 34 pauses.

Controls

• D-Pad: Movement
  • Hold Down to crouch
  • Hold Up or Down while hanging to climb up/drop down
• A: Use held object
• B: Jump, climb up (while hanging)
  • Down + B: Drop through jump-through platforms
• X: Ground pound
• Y: Throw held object; hold button to charge up meter
  • B (if not fully charged): Jump higher (jump height depends on the meter)
  • B (if fully charged): Fly around the area
• L: Pause
• R: Frame advance (while paused)
• Start: Temporarily pause for 1.5 seconds then toggle player collision

Character Movement and Actions

• Colliding with an enemy leads to the player being knocked back and stunned without damaging health.
• You can stun enemies by jumping on them.
• You can grab onto and hang from various jump-through platforms, and also drop through them.
• There are also platforms that you can only grab onto and hang from, but cannot walk on. It is hard to tell what these are, but when observed in a tilemap viewer on BG layer 2, they appear to be chains.
• The character can climb by pressing Up while against sides of tree trunks. Pressing Right or Left while climbing makes the character swing around to the other side of green vines, trees, and the thinner grey tree trunks. You cannot climb some objects, like stone surfaces and the houses.
• You can crawl through 1-tile high gaps by holding Down, then moving towards the gap.
• The character will push against solid walls after about a half a second. This doesn't seem to affect objects in either build.

Levels

Level 1

A pretty sizable jungle area.

• There's a cannon object you can pick up, though its missiles can only defeat a select few enemies.
• There's a friendly monkey that roams around. You can jump on it to stun it.
• This level also features three enemies: a weird mushroom that chases after you, a dog that chases after you, and an early version of the Melon Bug from Yoshi's Island which has the same behavior as its final counterpart (curling up into a ball and rolling into you).
• There are objects hanging from a few trees, as well as a few stars hanging from a ceiling. You can ground pound to knock these objects down. These objects cannot be collected, however.

Level 2

A short level featuring various houses.

• Holding Down while on top of a chimney drops you "inside" a house and changes the palette, similar to the collision-disabling pause button.

Level 3

A cave area with multiple doors you can enter and small alcoves you have to crouch under. Also, dogs; lots of dogs.

• The background is an early version of one of the Yoshi's Island cave backgrounds, with visible windows.

Level 4

A very small level that seems to test sprite scaling and how it affects collision, thanks to tubes that jump up and stretch themselves. The tubes cannot be flown through.

Boss

A giant bird that jumps around. Stomp it once, and it jumps higher. Stomp it a second time, and it ricochets off the walls. Stomp it a third time, and it turns into a small harmless bird that flies away. Once this level is cleared, you loop back to Level 1.

Unused Graphics

Present in the ROM are sprites for several unused creatures, which can also be seen in rensa-bg.CGX. Interestingly, the green striped creature bears a faint resemblance to a giant orange bird-like thing found among various Super Mario World assets in the July 2020 Nintendo leak.

It seems like the mushroom enemy could defend itself.

A full set of numbers for the nonfunctional timer.

An unused font directly from Super Mario World, plus a number set and a "POINT" element for the HUD. The "missing" numbers would have been constructed by flipping and reusing existing tiles.

What appears to be a rough sketch of some sort of ring is present at 0x62000. Could be an early version of the Start and Exit rings. No palettes seem to work nicely with this.