Pokémon Platinum beta

Japanese logo of Pokémon Platinum

Pokémon Platinum, released on September 13th, 2008 in Japan and on March 22, 2009 in the United States, was in development for a long time beforehand. During its planning and development stages, various things were going to be a part of the games, but many did not make it to the final games.

Locations

File:Btparkpt.png

The Battle Park in Platinum. Notice the lack of shadow and the updated environment

The Battle Park from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl appears in the coding of Platinum by modifying the game with specialized devices and software. This indicates that the Battle Frontier was created some time after the development of Platinum begun.

Sprites

During the planning and development stages of Pokémon Platinum, several sprites were going to be a part of the games. As the game contains a different sprite set from that of Diamond and Pearl, some sprites were dropped or changed since the early screenshots that were officially released.

An alternate sprite of Giratina was also shown in several pre-release screenshots of the game. Also, the internal coding of Platinum also holds different sets of sprites for Shaymin's Land Forme, which are not accessible during normal gameplay.

Prototype sprites for the items which change Rotom's forms were also found.

File:Shaymin Beta.png	File:Another Beta.png	File:Origin Beta.png
Alternate Land Forme Shaymin sprite	Leftover animation frame for Giratina's Altered Forme sprite	Beta Altered Forme Giratina sprite	Initial sprites for Rotom's form changing items

Music

In addition to Platinum's exclusive tracks, all tracks found in the coding of Diamond and Pearl are also present within the programming of the game.

Items

The unused items discovered in the coding of Diamond and Pearl are too available in Platinum. However, two finalized and used items from Diamond and Pearl that have no use in Platinum still remain in the game's programming:

Point Card, which stores Battle Points earned in the Battle Tower. Surprisingly, it will still function despite the fact that Battle Points are now tracked by the Vs. Recorder;
Storage Key, which allows entrance to the Team Galactic Warehouse. It is now used by Looker instead. Hacking the item will not allow it to function, however.

Debugging features

Leftover dialogue within Platinum (and later HeartGold and SoulSilver) provides further details on how the game developers might have debugged the game. For instance, such text refers to features such as a "Sound test" and an option to modify the real-time clock (RTC).^[1]