Padding Stage
A padding stage is a stage in Super Monkey Ball 2 that, as the name would suggest, exists solely to use up space on the internal stage list.
Explanation
Super Monkey Ball 2's internal stage list contains 420 stages. In addition to stages used in the Main Game, this list is used by the system to find and sort Party Game and cutscene assets.
Even with this large amount, there are a number of stages that were never used. Likely to prevent the IDs of existing stages from being changed, these empty stages instead are assigned a specific pointer value, which tells the system that they are a stage utilizing a specific map. Since every padding stage utilizes the same map, they all look the exact same.
Interestingly, these stages appear to have been added simply to "wallpaper over" assets from the original Super Monkey Ball. Many padding stages have corresponding models that were used in the previous game. (For example, the picture to the right shows a prop from Daa Loo Maa associated with stage 113.) However, unless these models directly affect the goal or certain background effects, they will never appear in-game.
Description
All padding stages have the same layout. They consist of a square with a gray floor texture that has the starting point in the bottom-left corner and a goal in the top-right corner.
While the layout of a padding stage is always the same, the environment is not. Depending on the stage ID, the background, goal, and music will vary. However, the most common environment consists of a black background, a white goal, and the music from Volcanic Magma.
Accessing
While padding stages are present on the disk, they are ignored in standard gameplay since their stage IDs are intentionally never referenced. As a result, these stages are typically accessed by using the Stage Select feature found in the game's Debug Mode. A padding stage can be found by selecting any of the following levels: 103~120, 124~130, 141, 142, 149, 151, 158, 179, 180, 184, 196, 198 and 199.
Beginner 11 Glitch
On a new file, it is possible to access a padding stage via a glitch:
- Begin Story Mode.
- Begin playing Simple but exit Story Mode before finishing.
- Play the stage in Practice Mode.
- Begin playing Advanced in Challenge Mode, but exit the mode during one of the stages 1~10.
- Go back to Practice Mode. Highlight Advanced and switch to Beginner by pressing the L button once. The stage, named "~~", will be highlighted automatically.
It is unclear which stage ID this glitch accesses, and its music (the Story Mode level select theme) is not used by any padding stage accessed through Debug Mode.
Trivia
- It is impossible to view a padding stage using the View Stage option in the menu. The padding stage in the Beginner 11 glitch will be invisible, while a padding stage accessed with Debug Mode will be closed when START is pressed since the stage ID is invalid.
