Trivia / Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

• Blooper: Most of them are exclusive to the North American version.
  • The North American release doesn't properly decompress the names of a couple locations, the two most notable being "Capsule Monsters Cave" and "Gratze Kingdom", which are instead rendered as "U e MoV T Cave" and "'3y Kingdom" respectively.
  • Also, due to a programming error, the Strahda and Kamirno Towers don't display the "R" in "Tower" in their location names, rendering it as "Towe".
  • Still in the North American version, the Submarine Shrine and Ancient Cave 100th floor have their maps displayed as a garbled mess for some reason.
  • In the PAL version, the flunkies summoned by Idura during one of his battles has their name spelled as "Henohman" instead of "Henchman".
• Dummied Out: Lufia II is a treasure trove of cut content, even without mentioning the prototype. Some of the cut content includes:
  • The Kraken and King Hidora enemies. The Kraken's overworld sprites are used in the sequence where Dekar comes back, but it can never actually be fought as an enemy. Their stats are reminiscent of monsters exclusive to the Ancient Cave. They would only appear in the next game proper.
  • The entirety of Gratze Castle's exterior is tiled properly, despite the fact that only a small portion of it is visible in-game, due to being a cutscene-only area.
  • Overworld sprites for a few of the characters doing actions such as pushing or carrying stuff, implying that at some point you were able to switch party leaders at will (something that would only be implemented properly in Lufia: The Ruins of Lore). Artea only has a single pushing sprite, while Lexis has no sprites at all.
  • Tall Erim walking animations for all directions. Only the left facing sprites are used in the final game.
  • A fully functional Debug Mode that's still in the final game's code.
• Sequel First: Sequel Only in fact; Lufia & The Fortress of Doom was never released in the PAL territories (a common problem for JRPGs in the 16-bit era), but the sequel was, albeit just as ''Lufia''.
• What Could Have Been: The game's prototype contains some notable changes from the final version.
  • Characters originally had victory animations, much like the first game, with the animations themselves having proportions much more akin to that game's than the final's.
  • Lexis' design, apart from the head and wrench, was completely different. Rather than dressing like a scientist, he originally wore standard armor with a leather chestplate and greaves.
  • An entire village, located between Sundletan and Alunze Kingdom, was cut from the final game, going by the names Nikoru (exterior) and Koniru (interiors), though nobody knows which one is the correct one. Dialogue from the NPCs point towards it being cut very early in development, due to them making references to a skill system that's completely different from the one even in the prototype, acting more as passive abilities that you could learn through dojos scattered throughout the world. You would've been able to equip up to 2 of these skills per character, and they could be unlearned.
  • In what seems to be a funny Call-Back to the first game, the tutorial wall tiles are still present in Daos Shrine. These were removed from the final version.
  • The game's soundfont used slightly different samples for orchestral hits, bells, strings and organs. The soundtrack overall sounded a lot more echo-y. As for the music itself, notable examples include:
    • The second opening theme, "Rumbling", which was lower pitched compared to the final version.
    • The skill obtained jingle was completely different in the prototype.
    • "Comrade", the new party member jingle, was 25% slower.
    • "To Those of the Azure Skies", the airship theme, had a longer intro that got cut. Curiously, the OST version of the track still uses the extended intro.
    • "Watchtowers of the Seal" was slightly slower and lower pitched.
    • "The Final Decisive Battle" only plays for two loops in the prototype, rather than two-and-a-half loops, and has the second loop use a string ensemble rather than keeping the first loop's brass ensemble.
    • Three tracks were cut from the final game: A remix of "The Spoils of War" from the first Lufia titled "Grief" (which is also in the OST and would later be properly used in Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals), a short and tense loop called "Panic", and a solemn remix of the overworld theme called "Wakare" ("Farewell"), similar to the first game's "Field Motif" track.

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