The North American arcade release of Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is believed to be the first game to incorporate microtransactions, allowing players to purchase extra lives, characters, energy and moves by putting more quarters into the arcade cabinet. This would be removed for the Japanese release, and replaced with a conventional character select screen that lets you play as the previously paywalled extra characters, and the game's difficulty was rebalanced to be easier to adjust.
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 the GameCube and Xbox versions of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it was intended for there to be portraits littered throughout Hogwarts of various real world people, specifically developers, their families, and some people the developers forgot about years after the fact (but believed they were involved in some kind of contest). The portraits of family members in particular were included as a coping mechanism, as they were suffering during development.
"We were doing very long hours, and it wasn’t just us suffering – our families were, too. They were supporting us – often suffering in silence. Marriages were strained, children were missing a parent. It seemed only right to put their pictures into Hogwarts; our odd way of showing our love and gratitude. And possibly to remind us what they looked like."
The development team considered these portraits some of the very few elements of the game they were truly proud of. Eurocom requested the portraits be removed without explaining why, something the developers were "too tired to fight".
According to leaked development files from The Simpsons: Hit & Run, Sideshow Bob and Poochie were originally planned to appear in the game. There is an unused low-polygon model for Poochie that is pre-posed, meaning that it was likely supposed to appear as merchandise of the character (most likely alongside Itchy and Scratchy's balloons in Level 2), rather than appearing in an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon cutscene. No models for Sideshow Bob are known to exist.
While Super Donkey is thought to have ultimately evolved into Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, the project was likely tossed around as a Mario or Zelda game at various points in development.
Various development assets associated with Super Donkey, which were uncovered alongside the prototype in the 2020 Gigaleak, include sprites and animations for Link, Mario, and Donkey Kong; the animation files for Link are dated to fall 1990, while Mario's animation files are dated to winter of that year. Additional files for all three characters span overlapping periods in 1991. Link's sprites and animations indicate that Super Donkey was at one point planned to be a side-scrolling Zelda title similar to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, while Mario's animations imply that the iteration that starred him and Donkey Kong eventually morphed into the 1994 Game Boy title Donkey Kong.
The game’s files have four .txt files titled DEUTCH.TXT, ENGLISH.TXT, ESPANOL.TXT and FRENCH.TXT, suggesting German, Spanish and French versions were planned for the game. In the end, only an English version exists.
In Garfield's alternate costume texture, there is a portion devoted to Garfello, Garfield's Ninja Turtle alter ego from the Garfield Meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles short comic published in the 1992 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magazine.
There is an unused model of the Statue of David by Michelangelo in Squidward's prop set. This was likely intended for his air down strong, where he slams down with a block of marble, referencing the SpongeBob episode "Artist Unknown", where SpongeBob makes the same statue by accident. The model has a clam on its groin as censorship, just like in the original episode, but does not have the nose Squidward places on it.
As admitted by Mitsuhiro Takano (the original script writer for Star Fox 64) in an issue of Iwata Asks regarding Star Fox 64 3D, the development team had initially planned on including more aquatic stages based around the Blue Marine in the original game, but these were removed because they felt they dragged down the pace too much. In the Japanese version of the Aquas stage in Star Fox 64, Falco says:
こんな物 後にも先にも１回きりだぜ！(This is like the only time in our life we'll ever use this thing!)
English SF64's equivalent to this is "This thing will never hold together."
Apparently, this was the result of Takano feeling bad about there only being one underwater stage in all of SF64's single-player mode.
Going by files pertaining to Star Fox 64 found within the Nintendo Gigaleak, it seems one of these cut Blue Marine stages was known as カトレア (Katorea), which properly translates into Cattleya. Cattleya is a genus of orchids, which adds more credence that this was planned to be a beautiful water planet. The planet's initials (CL) show up in many other other source files, which gives clue to what it would've been like; for example, fox_edisplay references CL_SHIP0, CL_SHIP1, and fish00, whereas fox_boss.h refers to CL's boss as 鯖/saba, or "mackerel.” fox_jyuza.o meanwhile refers to a "saba snake", which heavily implies that the stage's boss would have been a giant fish creature or an eel of some kind.
On February 9, 2007, nearly a year after the game's release, director and series creator Shigesato Itoi set up an online quiz for fans who had completed the game, testing their knowledge about it. One question asks which Thief Jujitsu technique Wess uses, with the options being:
• "Super Sunset Miracle Chop Again" • "Super Chop Miracle Sunset Again" • "Super Miracle Sunset Chop Again" • "Miracle Chop Super Sunset Again" • "Miracle Chop Super Sunrise Again" • "Miracle Sunset Super Chop Again"
None of this corresponds with anything seen in the final game, and a note attached to the question clarifies that it was based on something that was removed during development, telling fans to ignore it. Because the intended answer was never confirmed by anyone on the Mother 3 development team, it is unknown what the true name of the technique was. Similarly, the question doesn't clarify what the technique would've been used for, though the phrase "Thief Jujitsu" is most similar to the Secret Thief Arts Technique that Wess occasionally uses in battle.
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Inside the files of The Addams Family for ZX Spectrum is a strange, vindictive, and violent rant about carjackers and burglars from an unknown developer, riddled with what some may interpret as subtle classist undertones:
"CAR THIEVES AND BURGLARS, WHO ARE THE SCUM OF THIS EARTH, SHOULD ALL BE HANGED.
WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS... HOW DO THE SCUM MANAGE TO STEAL CARS AND ROB HOUSES WHEN THEY HAVEN'T GOT A BRAIN ???
THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR CRIME.
IF SOMEONE BREAKS INTO YOUR HOUSE OR TRIES TO STEAL YOUR CAR, YOU SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO SHOOT THEM DEAD, AS THEY ARE NO MORE USE TO SOCIETY THAN A RABID DOG.
I PAY TAXES TO STOP SCUM DYING IN THE STREETS AND THEN THEY COME ROUND AND STEAL MY POSSESSIONS. NOW THERE'S GRATITUDE FOR YOU.
THE SCUM ARE TRYING TO BRING THIS COUNTRY DOWN TO THEIR LEVEL OF DEPRAVITY. PLEASE DON'T LET THEM SUCCEED."
In the area beside The Watermill, there is a tree with a small low-poly representation of a Japanese Rhinoceros Beetle attached to it. This pairs well with a bit of cut content recently found within the game's code for the same area, where Ico could have gained a secret weapon that took the form of an Insect Net.
How these two elements could have come together remains unknown, but it was likely part of a reference to Ico's voice actor, Kazuhiro Shindō, and his prior role as 'Boku' in the first installment of the Boku no Natsuyasumi series.
Boku no Natsuyasumi had an extensive bug-catching and beetle fighting system. These features reappearing in ICO were potentially meant to be an elaborate reference, playing on the idea that Kazuhiro Shindō is once again voicing a young boy, who might refer to himself with the first-person pronoun 'boku', if he were to speak Japanese.
The credits for both ICO and Boku No Nastuyasumi show that both protagonists' voice actors have the same name. I have highlighted both names in a combined screenshot attached.
Additionally, Kazuhiro Shindō's Japanese Wikipedia article confirms his video game roles. Providing evidence that he really was the voice of both characters: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/進藤一宏#ゲーム
Mario Forever, between versions 3.5 and 4.4, used an audio track that was a "fart version" of the Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island castle theme as the Hardcore World 1-4 music. Prior to its addition, some versions of the game had an unused version of the fart castle theme with Luigi impressions by developer Michał Gdaniec non-melodically interspersed.
In early versions of Super Smash Bros. Crusade, one of the playable characters was "Weegee", a parodic version of Luigi originating from the DOS version of Mario is Missing! whose moveset was a composite of different memes from "YouTube Poop" videos. Weegee was removed in version 9.2 in 2018 as the development team did not want to "be the meme game". They believed the game's reputation was becoming overcentralized on the presence of Weegee, and that the character was not of a high enough quality standard to keep around. This decision sparked major backlash from Crusade fans, and ultimately Weegee was reinstated in 2021's version 9.4, with a new moveset comprising of more modern memes.
"I'm the lead Spriter of the project since about halfway through 0.9.1's development (Shantae and Pikachu being my first major projects).
The reasoning behind removing Weegee is because we don't want to be the meme game. We're working hard to make an enjoyable experience, and are working to really up the quality lately. However, this does not mean that we're not open to slightly less orthodox roster decisions. We just don't want a literal meme character is all.
To those who are following the project, we have been working on redoing older content to bring it to a higher quality standard. This does not mean that the game is done expanding. It just means that we have some catching up to do before we can really push forward."
According to the British magazine Nintendo Magazine System, before settling on Yoshi's Island characters for Tetris Attack, Nintendo reportedly asked Rare to replace Panel de Pon's fairies with characters from the Killer Instinct series.
In the Japanese version, and prototype US builds, of DuckTales, the ending line of the game was the grammatically incorrect, and arguably out-of-character, Scrooge line "There really is more important treasure than this, that is... dream and friends", which was changed to "I couldn't have done it without you. I really am the richest duck in the world." for the US release. Darlene Lacey, a producer on the Disney side of DuckTales would say of the partially unused line in a Kotaku interview:
"It seemed so earnest and dramatic, I was so tempted to leave it as is, but I knew I couldn’t. So, I changed it to the more polished, but forgettable ‘Right, lads! I couldn’t have done it without you. I really am the richest duck in the world.’ I love that fans found out about the original ending. It was the better line!"
Slap City was originally envisioned as a mini-game in Ittle Dew 2 before being reworked into a full title. The scrapped mini-game had intentionally poor presentation, being locked to 30FPS with interlacing, something that was not retained in Slap City given it's focus on competitive play, and a low-poly style inspired by the original Super Smash Bros. The polygonal alternate form of Fluffy Fields, where the Clone Team is fought in arcade mode, is based on this version of the game.
During development of Pizza Tower, multiple demo builds were released - among these was a build known as the "Peter Griffin Experience", built off of the 2018 "early test build". This demo replaced every single sprite of Peppino with a highly compressed edit of a stock image of Peter Griffin from Family Guy made to resemble Peppino, and replaced one of the game's musical tracks with a fan-made Family Guy remix.
After this build, the Peter Griffin "arms resting" pose would appear in some builds as a taunt, albeit as an actual sprite and not an edit, and a video would be posted by developer McPig showcasing the taunt, accompanied by the first note of the Family Guy theme song, under the name "family", likely referencing a a meme video that plays the first note and ends. This taunt was removed for unknown reasons in the final game.
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Power Punch II was originally intended to be a licensed game starring Mike Tyson titled Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch, but, following accusations and an eventual (albeit dubious) conviction of rape against Tyson, was reworked to star an original boxing character named "Mark Tyler", with the title gaining a "2" at the end despite the non-existance of a Power Punch 1, possibly to fool customers who previously bought Punch-Out!!, but did not remember the game's name. It was at one point misreported that Nintendo were backing the game as a Punch-Out!! sequel, but this is untrue.
The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds was the first Humongous Entertainment game to use cel animation instead of computer-designed sprites. This was a last second choice that required all existing visuals and much of the game's code to be thrown away, and was done without a delay nor much in the way of cel animation knowledge from the team, requiring unpaid overtime. Despite this story's surface-level similarities to crunch practices, the challenge of remaking the game on such short notice was chosen and consented to by the Freddi Fish team, and developers of the game have reminisced on this period fondly.
The North American arcade release of Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is believed to be the first game to incorporate microtransactions, allowing players to purchase extra lives, characters, energy and moves by putting more quarters into the arcade cabinet. This would be removed for the Japanese release, and replaced with a conventional character select screen that lets you play as the previously paywalled extra characters, and the game's difficulty was rebalanced to be easier to adjust.
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 the GameCube and Xbox versions of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it was intended for there to be portraits littered throughout Hogwarts of various real world people, specifically developers, their families, and some people the developers forgot about years after the fact (but believed they were involved in some kind of contest). The portraits of family members in particular were included as a coping mechanism, as they were suffering during development.
According to leaked development files from The Simpsons: Hit & Run, Sideshow Bob and Poochie were originally planned to appear in the game. There is an unused low-polygon model for Poochie that is pre-posed, meaning that it was likely supposed to appear as merchandise of the character (most likely alongside Itchy and Scratchy's balloons in Level 2), rather than appearing in an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon cutscene. No models for Sideshow Bob are known to exist.
In Garfield's alternate costume texture, there is a portion devoted to Garfello, Garfield's Ninja Turtle alter ego from the Garfield Meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles short comic published in the 1992 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magazine.
There is an unused model of the Statue of David by Michelangelo in Squidward's prop set. This was likely intended for his air down strong, where he slams down with a block of marble, referencing the SpongeBob episode "Artist Unknown", where SpongeBob makes the same statue by accident. The model has a clam on its groin as censorship, just like in the original episode, but does not have the nose Squidward places on it.
As admitted by Mitsuhiro Takano (the original script writer for Star Fox 64) in an issue of Iwata Asks regarding Star Fox 64 3D, the development team had initially planned on including more aquatic stages based around the Blue Marine in the original game, but these were removed because they felt they dragged down the pace too much. In the Japanese version of the Aquas stage in Star Fox 64, Falco says:
On February 9, 2007, nearly a year after the game's release, director and series creator Shigesato Itoi set up an online quiz for fans who had completed the game, testing their knowledge about it. One question asks which Thief Jujitsu technique Wess uses, with the options being:
In the area beside The Watermill, there is a tree with a small low-poly representation of a Japanese Rhinoceros Beetle attached to it. This pairs well with a bit of cut content recently found within the game's code for the same area, where Ico could have gained a secret weapon that took the form of an Insect Net.
Mario Forever, between versions 3.5 and 4.4, used an audio track that was a "fart version" of the Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island castle theme as the Hardcore World 1-4 music. Prior to its addition, some versions of the game had an unused version of the fart castle theme with Luigi impressions by developer Michał Gdaniec non-melodically interspersed.
In the Japanese version, and prototype US builds, of DuckTales, the ending line of the game was the grammatically incorrect, and arguably out-of-character, Scrooge line "There really is more important treasure than this, that is... dream and friends", which was changed to "I couldn't have done it without you. I really am the richest duck in the world." for the US release. Darlene Lacey, a producer on the Disney side of DuckTales would say of the partially unused line in a Kotaku interview:
During development of Pizza Tower, multiple demo builds were released - among these was a build known as the "Peter Griffin Experience", built off of the 2018 "early test build". This demo replaced every single sprite of Peppino with a highly compressed edit of a stock image of Peter Griffin from Family Guy made to resemble Peppino, and replaced one of the game's musical tracks with a fan-made Family Guy remix.
The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds was the first Humongous Entertainment game to use cel animation instead of computer-designed sprites. This was a last second choice that required all existing visuals and much of the game's code to be thrown away, and was done without a delay nor much in the way of cel animation knowledge from the team, requiring unpaid overtime. Despite this story's surface-level similarities to crunch practices, the challenge of remaking the game on such short notice was chosen and consented to by the Freddi Fish team, and developers of the game have reminisced on this period fondly.