The floating planetoid representing CloudRunner Fortress on the world map screen in Star Fox Adventures very clearly resembles its original, rockier iteration from the Nintendo 64 version of Dinosaur Planet, as opposed to its remodeled look in the final Star Fox Adventures.
In a weekly update post by Kane Carter, he shared that the model for Blackrabbit was changed for POPGOES Evergreen by basing it on a more accurate Toy Bonnie model that was designed by one of the game's modelers named Alexis. Due to this change, the Blackrabbit model seen in a cutscene in POPGOES Arcade uses the outdated model, and Carter has no plans to re-render the cutscene due to both models appearing very similar despite being different.
In the "3rd Mix PLUS!" variant of this game, there is unused data for the song "TOTAL RECALL" by ULTIMATE HEIGHTS. This includes unused graphics, step charts and lyrics for the song.
The South Korean version of the game (released two years after the original Japanese edition) contains eleven unused maps not found in any other release, featuring fully 3D environments which do not line up with any locations present in the finished product. All assets related to these maps are dated after the game's Japanese release, with intervals ranging from five days to just over three months. Additionally, the maps' texture names are written in Romanized Japanese rather than Korean, indicating that they were not created by Nintendo of Korea.
Two of these maps, kri_04 and kri_05, additionally feature various cat NPCs, all drawn in substantially different art styles compared to not only each other, but also the final game. Each one is named after a developer from the Super Paper Mario staff: yamada_neko02 (Koichiro Yamada), koba_neko (Sayuri Kobayashi), tuka_neko (Naoko Tsukamoto), and kawa_neko (Chie Kawabe).
Of these four, kawa_neko is the most unique, and was apparently designed as a player character. Firstly, the cat's name is only given to its mesh, with its sprite instead being named bc_all.1. Additionally, kawa_neko features an animated tail and a mesh that is centered on the ground rather than the middle of the room. Furthermore, new_neko_18, a redesigned version of kawa_neko with white fur instead of black, can be found in kri_08, kri_09, and kri_10; new_neko_18's mesh is explicitly labeled "PLAYER" in the data for these maps.
Taken together, all of these elements imply that these early rooms were created as a proof-of-concept for an original project by Intelligent Systems that ended up cancelled for unknown reasons.
Certain in-game enemies are only able to be fought by Mario & Luigi or Bowser. Despite this, a few Bowser-oriented enemies have unique behaviors for Mario & Luigi, which can only be seen through hacking the game:
• All of Naplock's attacks can be dodged or countered by jumping, with its snot bubble attack also missing Mario & Luigi entirely even if nothing is done. • Dark Mechawful's punch attack can be countered with Mario & Luigi's hammers, while its countdown attack is replaced by the same star attack used by the Dark Mechawful head, which can fight Mario & Luigi in normal gameplay if Bowser inhales it. However, in a hacked Dark Mechawful fight, this attack progresses extremely slowly. • The smoke signals at the start of Choomba's charge attack are changed from fist and shell icons to "M" and "L" ones, indicating which brothers it will charge at and in which order; the attack can also be countered by hammering. • Dark Trashure's thrown items can be avoided or countered by jumping, similarly to its standard counterpart. However, the items move far faster than those thrown by a regular Trashure or a Dark Trashure fought by Bowser.
While most of these behaviors appear to be failsafes, Choomba is unique in that the "M" and "L" smoke signals are not present anywhere else in the game, indicating that at one point in development, Mario & Luigi would've been able to explore the Tunnel, where Choombas are fought.
Meanwhile, when hacking the game to allow Bowser to fight enemies that can only be encountered by Mario & Luigi, most of them will either crash the game, flee immediately, or display glitchy behavior. One unique case is Magifoofas, which can be inhaled by Bowser (despite the Vacuum Block not indicating this), indicating that the developers considered letting him encounter them in some form.
When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
Wuhu Island was originally created for Wii Sports before its debut appearance in Wii Fit. An early version of the island can be seen in a leaked development image for Wii Sports, and in footage of the unused Airplane sport in the E3 2006 demo for the game. The leaked image also indicates that the Airplane sport would have also given you the option to fly around the island with a Rocket Belt, an idea that would later be reused in Pilotwings Resort.
Within the game's data are sprites for Glad and Calm Goombas; the final game only features regular, Mad, and Sad varieties. Of note is that the Calm Goombas' sprites depict them with a pastel green palette, whereas the final game only differentiates Calm enemies from regular ones by having them stay asleep until provoked. Both unused Goomba types also feature a considerably different art style compared to the final game, indicating that the removal of color coordination for the Calm vibe occurred at around the same time as the overhaul in the game's aesthetics.
In an interview with the developers at Blue Tongue, they mentioned several buildings they wanted to include in this game, but had to drop due to design decisions or memory constraints on home consoles:
•Hotels, which would provide extra accommodation for guests. •Dino-Vet Station, which would have been vital for keeping dinosaurs healthy. •Hunting Platforms, which would let visitors hunt down carnivores in the park from afar.
The Dino-Vet Station can be found in earlier promotional material for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and also within its game files. Likewise with the Hunting Platform, which also still has Audio, Ini and even Rig Files within the game.
The now defunct Jurassic Park Institute website featured what appeared to be an unused 3D model of a Chasmosaurus for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. This would line up with the developer's comments about wanting to include more dinosaur species outside of the 25 present in the final game, although curiously, this species is not mentioned within the game's "Constant.ini" file, which mentions dozens of other unused dinosaur species.
Concept art for Paper Mario: Color Splash shows that the captain of the Violet Passage was at one point going to have a dark skin tone. This would've marked the first instance of a Toad with a distinct skin color (not counting usually-pale Toads under a transformation) in a Mario game, but not the first instance of a non-pale Toad in the Mario franchise as a whole. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show featured a one-off Native American Toad named Pronto, a parody of Tonto from The Lone Ranger, in the episode "The Provolone Ranger".
Early builds of Pokémon Gold and Silver indicate that Celebi was originally designed after Kokopelli, a trickster figure, mythical flautist, and fertility deity worshiped by certain indigenous tribes in the American southwest (most prominently the Hopi and Anasazi). This is most apparent in a leaked build from May 6, 1998, in which Celebi's sprite is nearly identical to modern depictions of Kokopelli, with the only major deviation being the addition of eyes. A later design is present in the data for the Spaceworld 1999 demo, bearing a closer resemblance to Celebi's finalized sprite but retaining the Kokopelli motif.
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Within the data for the Mooncrash expansion pack is an unused texture depicting Dick Butt, a drawing from a 2006 installment of K.C. Green's webcomic Horribleville. The texture's filename, "vfx_temp.png," indicates that it was a placeholder image that simply wasn't removed before the expansion pack's release.
When he was first released as DLC, General Winter's All-Star move effects had communist motifs. However, following complaints from the Russian populace about the portrayal of the USSR military as under-equipped in his source game Company of Heroes 2, and a voluntary recall of said game from Sega in that region, an update in 2013 would replace the hammer & sickle with a generic red star in all regions.
A prototype for Barkley: Shut Up & Jam 2 shows that, instead of the photo used in the final game, the title screen was going to show a cartoon illustration of Charles Barkley.
When the game's logo is shown in the intro of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, the word "BATTLE" has a shining effect, which is another video file overlaid over the 3D logo. There are two versions of this video, one with Japanese kanji and another with Latin script, however due to an oversight, the shining effect will only show Japanese kanji overlaid upon the English text. This would be fixed in the 2012 rerelease, but only for the English language, so other languages with an English logo still experience the error.
The January 2024 update celebrating Hi-Fi Rush's one year anniversary includes new t-shirts that players can wear in-game. Some of these t-shirts are exclusive to their own platform (Xbox, Steam, and Epic Game Store):
• Xbox owners get a green shirt saying “shadow dropped”, a reference to the game’s surprise release. • Epic Games Store owners get a shirt saying “this is simply unreal epic”, obviously a reference to Epic Games and the Unreal engine and series. • Steam owners get a shirt saying “Be Positive (Overwhelmingly)”, an obvious reference to Steam’s user review system.
However, two more additional exclusive shirts have recently been discovered through datamining that seem to curiously pertain to the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, two competitor platforms to Xbox.
• The red shirt seemingly for Switch says "rock out anywhere", obviously referencing the Switch's portable nature. • The blue shirt seemingly for PS5 says "I'm here baby", possibly a reference to the game finally arriving on PS5 after a year of being exclusive to Xbox platforms.
In early 2024, Hi-Fi Rush was the subject of various rumors claiming that Microsoft planned on porting it and possibly other first party Xbox titles to its competitor platforms, those specifically being PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. In response to these rumors, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer announced in an Xbox Business Update on February 16, 2024 that four of their previously Xbox exclusive titles were being brought over to rival platforms. On February 21, 2024, it was announced that Hi-Fi Rush, along with Rare's Sea of Thieves and Obsidian's Grounded and Pentiment, were all being released on PlayStation 5 (and Nintendo Switch as well as PlayStation 4 for the latter two games), fully confirming the rumors.
There are fully functional unused Diggin' Chuck, Bullet Bill, Fishbone, and Spiny enemies in the code of Hummer Team's Super Mario World, as well as sprites for crushers, Lakitu, and Clappin' Chuck without associated coding.
An earlier logo for Star Fox 64 found within the 2020 Nintendo Gigaleak seems to indicate that its subtitle was, at one point, going to be "The Cosmic Crisis".
An unused enemy named "iwadama" was found in the game files. The creature shares many characteristics with the Beady Long Legs from Pikmin and Pikmin 2. However, instead of the spherical head the boss normally has, it is replaced with a large foot of the boss, possibly implying it would stomp it's head into the ground as well, and may have been a reimagining of the boss. It's unknown why it was cut, but it's possible it was replaced with the Shaggy and Baldy Long Legs in the final game.
The floating planetoid representing CloudRunner Fortress on the world map screen in Star Fox Adventures very clearly resembles its original, rockier iteration from the Nintendo 64 version of Dinosaur Planet, as opposed to its remodeled look in the final Star Fox Adventures.
In the "3rd Mix PLUS!" variant of this game, there is unused data for the song "TOTAL RECALL" by ULTIMATE HEIGHTS. This includes unused graphics, step charts and lyrics for the song.
The South Korean version of the game (released two years after the original Japanese edition) contains eleven unused maps not found in any other release, featuring fully 3D environments which do not line up with any locations present in the finished product. All assets related to these maps are dated after the game's Japanese release, with intervals ranging from five days to just over three months. Additionally, the maps' texture names are written in Romanized Japanese rather than Korean, indicating that they were not created by Nintendo of Korea.
Certain in-game enemies are only able to be fought by Mario & Luigi or Bowser. Despite this, a few Bowser-oriented enemies have unique behaviors for Mario & Luigi, which can only be seen through hacking the game:
When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
Wuhu Island was originally created for Wii Sports before its debut appearance in Wii Fit. An early version of the island can be seen in a leaked development image for Wii Sports, and in footage of the unused Airplane sport in the E3 2006 demo for the game. The leaked image also indicates that the Airplane sport would have also given you the option to fly around the island with a Rocket Belt, an idea that would later be reused in Pilotwings Resort.
In an interview with the developers at Blue Tongue, they mentioned several buildings they wanted to include in this game, but had to drop due to design decisions or memory constraints on home consoles:
The now defunct Jurassic Park Institute website featured what appeared to be an unused 3D model of a Chasmosaurus for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. This would line up with the developer's comments about wanting to include more dinosaur species outside of the 25 present in the final game, although curiously, this species is not mentioned within the game's "Constant.ini" file, which mentions dozens of other unused dinosaur species.
Concept art for Paper Mario: Color Splash shows that the captain of the Violet Passage was at one point going to have a dark skin tone. This would've marked the first instance of a Toad with a distinct skin color (not counting usually-pale Toads under a transformation) in a Mario game, but not the first instance of a non-pale Toad in the Mario franchise as a whole. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show featured a one-off Native American Toad named Pronto, a parody of Tonto from The Lone Ranger, in the episode "The Provolone Ranger".
Early builds of Pokémon Gold and Silver indicate that Celebi was originally designed after Kokopelli, a trickster figure, mythical flautist, and fertility deity worshiped by certain indigenous tribes in the American southwest (most prominently the Hopi and Anasazi). This is most apparent in a leaked build from May 6, 1998, in which Celebi's sprite is nearly identical to modern depictions of Kokopelli, with the only major deviation being the addition of eyes. A later design is present in the data for the Spaceworld 1999 demo, bearing a closer resemblance to Celebi's finalized sprite but retaining the Kokopelli motif.
When he was first released as DLC, General Winter's All-Star move effects had communist motifs. However, following complaints from the Russian populace about the portrayal of the USSR military as under-equipped in his source game Company of Heroes 2, and a voluntary recall of said game from Sega in that region, an update in 2013 would replace the hammer & sickle with a generic red star in all regions.
A prototype for Barkley: Shut Up & Jam 2 shows that, instead of the photo used in the final game, the title screen was going to show a cartoon illustration of Charles Barkley.
When the game's logo is shown in the intro of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, the word "BATTLE" has a shining effect, which is another video file overlaid over the 3D logo. There are two versions of this video, one with Japanese kanji and another with Latin script, however due to an oversight, the shining effect will only show Japanese kanji overlaid upon the English text. This would be fixed in the 2012 rerelease, but only for the English language, so other languages with an English logo still experience the error.
The January 2024 update celebrating Hi-Fi Rush's one year anniversary includes new t-shirts that players can wear in-game. Some of these t-shirts are exclusive to their own platform (Xbox, Steam, and Epic Game Store):
An earlier logo for Star Fox 64 found within the 2020 Nintendo Gigaleak seems to indicate that its subtitle was, at one point, going to be "The Cosmic Crisis".
An unused enemy named "iwadama" was found in the game files. The creature shares many characteristics with the Beady Long Legs from Pikmin and Pikmin 2. However, instead of the spherical head the boss normally has, it is replaced with a large foot of the boss, possibly implying it would stomp it's head into the ground as well, and may have been a reimagining of the boss. It's unknown why it was cut, but it's possible it was replaced with the Shaggy and Baldy Long Legs in the final game.