Proto:Pizza Tower/Early Test Build - The Cutting Room Floor (2024)

This is a sub-page of Proto:Pizza Tower.

See Also

Pizza Tower - The Cutting Room FloorPrerelease:Pizza Tower - The Cutting Room FloorPizza Tower/Heat Meter - The Cutting Room FloorTalk:Pizza Tower - The Cutting Room Floor

The first version of the Early Test Build of Pizza Tower was built on July 15th, 2018. The gameplay at this point was very similar to that of Wario Land 4, accommodated by placeholder sound effects from the Wario Land-series as a whole. One level was created specifically for this build, containing a tutorial, one open area to explore and two secret areas. You can rack up to 3000 points at max to get an S rank (if all 5 Toppins are also collected) with Weenies, Smoked Weenies, Cheeseslime and Pizza Box Goblins appearing throughout the level.

With this being built after only roughly four months of development, a lot of leftovers from even earlier points in time can be found throughout, and wouldn't get cleaned up until the release of Demo 2. Content such as early levels, enemies (that would get used later), abilities, sprites, voice clips and even content related to a cut demo version of the game all ended up on the chopping block. The community has collectively dubbed these early build leftovers the "Pre-Early Test Build", and paints a good picture on what the game's first months of development were like.

Three builds are confirmed to've been released; the initial release on July 15th, a bugfix and feedback patch on July 16th, and a joke build that replaces nearly every sprite of Peppino with an edited frame of Peter Griffin from July 21st.

Sub-Pages

Gameplay Differences

• The HUD is completely different, featuring Peppino's disembodied head on the top left which reacts to how fast you're going, alongside a Super Mario Bros. 3-esque speedometer. Starting with the April 2021 Patreon builds, this was replaced with a TV screen in the top right showing various animations depending on what's happening. The score is also displayed in the game's standard font as opposed to being stylized like a pizza in the final game, and the rank indicator is absent.
• The Pause menu is more basic;
  • It continues whatever music was playing during gameplay, and only has two options, "Retry" and "Exit".
  • Simply un-pausing resumes gameplay, instead of being its own option.
  • The background is taken up by a scrolling tiled background of pizzas, instead of a freeze frame of the game. No decorations nor denoters of found secrets/treasure are present yet.
• Peppino has a pitiful short jump by default, requiring the player to hold up to perform a higher jump as in the first three Wario Land games.
• Changing direction while in mach 3 will drop Peppino's speed back to mach 2.
• Defeating enemies causes them to drop collectibles, instead of instantly giving points. Although Peppino does have the ability to kill enemies, the only ones that are used in the main level (Weenies and Pepperoni Box Goblins) happen to be the only ones that weren't programmed to be killable at this point in development, being at most able to be stunned.
  • The only exception to this are the Cheeseslimes, which can be killed, but award no points.
• Peppino can't wallrun yet, which can lead to an easy softlock shortly after the first Pizza Box Goblin.
• Peppino's super jump starts instantly when pressing the Up button, and slowly builds up speed.
  • The only thing that decreases the vertical velocity of Peppino's superjump is if it breaks through any blocks.
• The knight transformation moves slower, jumps far shorter, and has a jab attack.
• There are no priests yet, so to lose a transformation, Peppino has to be hurt.
  • Hurting Peppino, when he's not in a transformation, has him drop some of his collectibles. Instead of permanently subtracting from the player's total score, this acts like the Honeycomb collectibles in Banjo-Kazooie, in that no matter how long you stall around for, they'll still be there for the player to pick up again.
• Bombs are not throwable objects in this build. Instead, when a bomb collides with Peppino, he holds it and goes into a panicked frenzy where he continuously runs back and forth until the bomb eventually blows up, ala the Flaming Wario transformation from the Wario Land series.
• Secret rooms were more similar in structure to the ones in Wario Land 4, and Meatophobia plays in these areas.
• Although Pillar John has been implemented, he can't found in this build's main level. Instead of ramming into him or feeding him the Toppins, Peppino has to go and collect the treasure to trigger the escape sequence.
  • The treasure is sealed behind a glass barrier that needs to be broken.
  • After Peppino collects the treasure, The Noise comes in and presses a button on a remote, which activates Pizza Time. This fits with the original plan for the Noise, where he was supposed to act as a constant foil to Peppino throughout the game, much like the actual Noid from the classic Domino's Pizza commercials. The Noise's sequence of actions carried over up until the Grinch Race demo.
• Lap 2 works differently; Instead of running 2 laps of the escape sequence, the player has to run back to the treasure room to get an extra 200 points, and then back to the start of the level again.
  • The Lap 2 trigger isn't a pizza warp yet, but instead just a simple blob of text that automatically triggers when Peppino touches it.
  • Lap 2 doesn't play The Death That I Deservioli (which hadn't been composed yet as of this point in development) yet, as the decission to change the background music for Lap 2 handn't been made until very late into the game's development and would change starting with the Eggplant builds.
• Once the player has either completed the level, or run out of time, and thus reached the rank/time's up screens, the only thing the player can do at this point is pause the game, and select either "Retry" or "Exit."

Sound Differences

• Generally, most sound effects are either taken from the Wario Land games, or come from different sound libraries.
• Funiculi Holiday is nowhere to be found. Instead, it's a more faithful rendition of Funiculi Funicula by Dim Widdy, which was arranged with Wario Land 4's soundfont.
• Theatrical Shenanigans had less instruments, and the lead saxophone was a brass trumpet.
• Transformations were originally going to have their own dedicated music tracks as in Wario Land 2 and 3, though they're only temporary stand-ins here; The Knight transformation uses Frog's Theme from Chrono Trigger (specifically the OST version with the extra intro), and Peppino holding a bomb uses the Flaming Wario theme from Wario Land 2 and 3.
• Peppino's iconic scream takes from Sound Ideas' sound library, rather than Hollywoodedge.
• The jingle for collecting a key is lifted directly from Virtual Boy: Wario Land.
• Peppino collecting the Peanut Butter treasure is a lifted sound effect from Wario Land 4 (ID 511 in the game's debug sound test).
• When The Noise enters the scene, he plays a "Strike" sound effect, also from Wario Land 4 (ID 713 in the game's debug sound test).
• The guitar in It's Pizza Time is much louder, and the "Hello there" heard at the start is taken directly from Wario Land 4. Various Wario voiceclips from Wario Land 4 can be heard at the 1:36 mark. Near the end when the music speeds up, the pitch gets bumped up 8 semitones.
• Victorious Degenerate wasn't composed yet, so as a temporary stand-in is the Stage Clear jingle from Wario World. The rank screen was also timed to show the player's rank on the final note.
• Likewise, no Time's Up jingle was composed yet either, so in its place is an endlessly looped version of a damage jingle from Wario Land 4 (ID 513 in the game's debug sound test).

Unused Music

Included with the original .zip, most of the music and sound effects are readily accessible, revealing themselves to be .ogg files. A few music tracks go unused in this demo.

• Intro is a stand-in temp track (the Minigame Shop theme from Wario Land 4), most likely the predecessor to Pizza Deluxe. In all revisions of the Early Test Build, the intro is silent; This track plays in a leftover unused room, though it's possible this was meant to play on the disclaimer.
• music_cooltheme is an early version of Pepperman Strikes! Like Theatrical Shenanigans, it too also has a lesser mix.
• music_escapetheme2 is an early version of Small Fruit, 5 PM, a track that didn't make it into the final game.
• zone_transup is the last temp track, being the Elevator theme also from Virtual Boy: Wario Land.
• sfx_menacing also uses Wario Land 4 audio as a temp stand-in (ID 124 in the game's debug sound test). It's currently unknown how this might have been used.

Sprite Differences

Being over 4 years before the game released, you bet this build has some different sprites, at least compared to the ones that survived in the final game in one form or another...

• Peppino's regular idle animation was very different in motion, with him jumping from pose to pose, instead of breathing in and out.
  • All of Peppino's raw sprites depict him wearing white clothes. This would later be changed to a saturated yellow during development of Demo 2, when the feature of alternate colors were introduced.

• The basic green squares have become blue and were given a more detailed, shiny look to them. These would again be changed to be purple between Blue Block Land builds.
  • On May 15th, 2022, they would be changed again, this time to basic transparent pink squares.