Yamori A

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Yamori A
Profile
Location	Sluice (B3)
Designer	Hitoshi Niwa (hn)
Gameplay
Agro	No
Sigils	1/2 major (back)

Yamori A (ヤモリA - lit. "Gecko A" in Japanese) is a colossus that was cut from the final release of Shadow of the Colossus.

Fumito Ueda briefly mentioned Yamori A during an interview from the December 2nd, 2005 edition of Famitsu while talking about the 8th colossus, with the quote: "There was actually another colossus of a similar type".

Appearance

Yamori A was similar to the 8th colossus, with it also being a gecko. Although unlike its counterpart, the top part of its body was covered in fur and its legs were armored. Its feet had three toes and its tail was split into three parts. Its face, while textured differently, had the same shape as that of the 8th colossus. Many of these features were likely placeholder, and not representative of the colossus' last design, as Ueda describes the picture in the artbook as an early screenshot of Yamori A.

Strategy

The famitsu extended nickname interview. It includes the extra information on Yamori A. Scanned by Dzetawmd and translated by Kepekley23.

The Famitsu Nicknames Interview with Fumito Ueda has him briefly go over Yamori A's strategy while talking about the 8th colossus.

"We called it Yamori, but there was actually another colossus of a similar type. It was a colossus that'd chase you while you were climbing the walls, and the strategy to defeat it was to grab onto its back with a backward-jump. I figured it'd be pointless to show the same thing twice, so I narrowed it down to one."

Instead of dropping it on the ground, Wander would need to lure it up the wall and jump onto its back, killing it by stabbing the sigil(s) in there. Besides that, it's unknown what else this battle entailed.

Location

Yamori A lived at B3, in the unused arena named Sluice.

A lot of team effort by the community digging into the files led to several pieces of evidence being unearthed surrounding the quadrant B3, Sluice and Yamori A. Such as Sluice's chip data, which reflects the models placed in the quadrant, matching perfectly with the low resolution texture of early B3, the textures shown in one of the beta images of B3 matching textures listed under the Sluice's texture segment in the data sheets, and an object named "yamoriA_hill" which contains textures that match with another object, named "sluice_rock".

Development History

This colossus was created sometime in 2003, and it used to be tested in Stage 11 before being placed on the world map. It is likely that this boss was added later than most, as another boss (Kubinaga) used to live in Stage 11 in the earlier days, before being replaced by Yamori A.

A sketch for a gecko colossus resembling an axolotl. It's possible it depicts Yamori A.

The artbook mentions that there existed three types of 8th colossus during development, and each were depicted in the page. Each of them had different strategies and weakpoint locations. The first was the original Yamori, created during the early days when the player character still had horns; the second was Yamori B, which was an evolution of the first Yamori, and the boss that ultimately became the 8th colossus; leaving the third to likely be Yamori A. After Yamori was revised and became Yamori B, it was decided to have another gecko boss in addition to it, so Yamori A was created. The name likely refers to the fact that the boss was easier overall when compared to Yamori B.

Wander on Yamori A's back.

The model of the Yamori A seen in the artbook screenshot was most likely modified from Yamori B's model, and wasn't finished. The picture is described as an early shot of the boss, meaning it shouldn't represent its proper design. Judging by the blue vest design of Wander in that picture, it is likely that it was taken between late 2003 to early 2004.

Textures of 'izu_yamoriA_test'.

The texture segment of Yamori A's model from the data sheets lists many different textures for the colossus, while the version shown in the artbook seems to only contain three aside from the fur textures. This further suggests that the model changed significantly from what's shown in said image. A texture segment named 'izu_yamoriA_test' lists all three textures from the picture, except for the fur. It would seem that the screenshot shows a slightly more advanced iteration than the model listed in 'izu_yamoriA_test', while still being far from its final design.

The volume control showing 21 colossi.

Yamori A most likely survived production until near the end of 2004, together with Sirius, Devil, Phoenix, and Roc, as all of them had AdpcmVolControl sheets, as indicated by the data sheets. Yamori A's texture segment also had a fair amount of textures, including textures for the electricity seen in the sigils from late beta screenshots of Snake and Knight; Sluice's texseg also seems to imply the arena was very detailed. Another evidence that Yamori A survived such a long time is that it had a unique idol statue in the Shrine of Worship, also indicated by the data sheets.

After the world map was reduced at the end of 2004, Yamori A was cut from the game, and B3 was reduced to a small slice of land and wall, only leaving a untextured A3 floating in the void.

Trivia

Tail from the E3 Demo version of the 8th colossus.

• The E3 Demo version of the 8th colossus' tail is split into three parts just like Yamori A's. Likely because Yamori A was made with the 8th colossus as its base.
• Yamori A is one of three unused colossi, the other two being Roc and Phoenix, to have a sigil texture listed on its model in the sheets. This was probably because the other colossi had the sigil separate from the main model, or were simply not added yet.
  • Several colossi from the E3 Demo had sigils separate from their main model. This wasn't the case for later versions.

Yamori A's pose compared to the last frame of the 8th colossus' shake animation in the E3 Demo.

• The screenshot of Yamori A was taken on the last frame of its shake animation for when Wander is on top of it. In the E3 Demo, the 8th colossus has the same animation, being played if Wander stands on top of its head. In later versions the animation was modified to be less intense.
• Two damage animations for the 8th colossus while it is still standing upright were found in the E3 Demo, being removed in later versions. They are named "add_mune_back_damage" (mune = chest) and "add_kosi_back_damage" (kosi = waist), and are likely remnants of Yamori A's animations. This may imply that Yamori A had two sigils, one at each end of its back.

Gallery

Early screenshot of Yamori A from the artbook.

Yamori A's textures, most of them are not in any versions available.