Yoshi Sample

Yoshi Sample
Developer: Nintendo Platform: Game Boy Advance This game has debugging material. This game has revisional differences.

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 prototype is documented on Hidden Palace.

Download Yoshi Sample (source code included) File: YoshiSample.7z (1.51 MB) (info)

Yoshi Sample is a scaled-down one-level port of Yoshi's Story that Nintendo supplied with each Game Boy Advance development kit as they started to dole them out shortly after the system was first revealed in April 2000. The sample was created to show off the capabilities of the GBA, featuring colorful pre-rendered sprites and a 2.5D environment.

The game itself is rather similar to the Nintendo 64 original, even including a few new enemies, though the gameplay is greatly simplified and there's no ending. Still, what's here is pretty impressive, especially since this was made very early in the GBA's existence.

To do: In order of importance: Install SDK 2.0. Build source code, check diffs with included build (how?). Build dates. Sound code/file differences. Look into Version 1's origin. Unused Killer bmp? Unused code and/or files?

Debug Features

Button	Function
Start	CPU Speed Check with egg graphics on left and right of screen.
Select	Causes Yoshi to lose 1 petal of health.

Source Code

BIN and ELF

The ELF file appears to contain more names from the source code, though this does not affect the gameplay.

Enemies

The unique enemies that don't appear in Yoshi's Story are internally named:

"bomb". Has longer legs than most Bob-ombs.

"killer" (Bullet Bill's Japanese name). Has a lot of frames that appear to be badly-drawn, and looks nothing like any Bullet Bill in any released game.

"omori5t", a 5-ton weight that works similarly to Thwomps but it falls always, instead of when Yoshi is near it.

Version Differences

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

Build 1 Mute

Has no sound, but nonetheless contains sound-related code and files. Its origin is currently unknown.

Build 2 Sound

Aside from having sound, the sound-related code and files are different than those in the above build. It was bundled with the third version of the GBA's SDK.