In a 2023 leak of unreleased content from different iOS games, an app titled Angry Birds Island - or alternatively Angry Birds Hatchery - was discovered. The prototype was simply a version of the original Angry Birds with two major differences •A mode called "Hatchery", which shows an overworld map of an island with a row at the bottom of toys and furniture •The first two worlds of the original game, but with an option to select from a set of birds, all of which appear to be hybrids of the regular birds This seemingly implies some kind of pet simulator mode with an egg breeding mechanic, not unlike the Chao Gardens from the Sonic Adventure series. It is unknown if this was planned as an update for Angry Birds or a new spin-off.
According to level designer and artist Alex "Pikomi" Pierschel, since Giana Sisters DS lacks a multiplayer mode, Giana's sister Maria couldn't be playable or even appear in the game, and revealed that Punk Giana took her place.
The first-ever footage of Luigi as a playable character in Super Mario 64 was discovered through an old VHS tape in 2023. The footage was captured by a Japanese broadcaster recording footage of Nintendo's 1995 Space World trade show in Japan for a TV program covering the event. Despite this, the footage of Luigi is not actually the primary focus of the clip and as such can barely be seen at all. The video shows Luigi falling back down after performing a spin-jump in what appears to be a red and white test area.
One of the enemies Sabre and Krystal would encounter in Dinosaur Planet were these robotic Scorpion-like automatons, typically found in Krazoa-build strongholds such as the Force Point Temples and Cape Claw. While removed in the final Star Fox Adventures, they could still be found hidden within the E3 2002 kiosk version via hacking.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, like the first game, contains unused calls from the announcer. Interestingly, a good chunk of these voice calls are for characters who could be clones or otherwise have a similar body shape to playable fighters, such as DoodleBob, Dark Danny Phantom, Nermal, Abrasive SpongeBob, Squilliam Fancyson, and La Tigresa. Perhaps most interestingly, Lucy Loud's ghost ancestor, Lucille Loud, is the only The Loud House character with an unused announcer line, despite the show's protagonist Lincoln having been cut from the first NASB and the show being based on a large ensemble cast of sisters. Michelangelo and Leonardo are the only cut veterans from the first game with unused announcer voice clips. None of them are from new shows, with a technical exception in the form of the name "Tak", which most likely refers to the Invader Zim character, as she would fit a clone role being an Irken invader like Zim, but could also potentially be for the titular character from the Tak series, though this is unlikely given that the game series had effectively been abandoned by Nickelodeon following the cancellation of its animated series in 2009.
Strangely, before the unused voice lines were dumped and publically uploaded to the internet, an almost entirely accurate list circulated online with Goku from Dragon Ball listed as an announcer call, likely a meme-based in-joke regardless of if it is real or fake, a name which was not included when the voice calls got datamined proper.
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According to series director Katsuhiro Harada, he came up with the idea of including a character based off former United States president Donald Trump the same night he won the 2016 presidential election. He asked producer Michael Murray if there were no licensing fees for including characters based off the U.S. president, citing "a lot of buzz" around Trump as a reason for including him.
Both Harada and Murray then briefly discussed the character's fighting style and Rage Arts while in an Uber rental car in San Francisco the night of the election, until they eventually decided to scrap the idea entirely when their Uber driver became upset and started driving at speeds of 200 km/h while calling out "Fuck Donald Trump".
The character of Penny Crygor was almost completely absent from pre-release material for WarioWare: Get It Together! - with the only instance of her that managed to slip through the cracks being a silhouetted version of her on the title for the Frenemy Frenzy mode - leading some Wario fans to believe she would be absent, much like Dribble & Spitz were in WarioWare: Touched!. When the game released, she would appear in a major role: as a deus-ex machina character in the penultimate level, complete with her own theme song.
In Mario Kart 64's Bowser's Castle, one can see what appears to be a green Thwomp locked up in a jail cell - this Thwomp is not actually green, but simply lit in a way that makes him appear as such.
This Thwomp would inspire urban legends claiming that players could bail him out through varying elaborate tricks, after which he would be playable under the name "Marty" (likely chosen for the ease of editing hoaxed images with the names Mario, Toad, and Yoshi)
When N64 Bowser's Castle returned in Mario Kart Wii, "Marty" would be made the color of the rest of the Thwomps, suggesting that his green complexion was simply an error and not an intentional design choice.
At one point, a sequel to I-Ninja was in development, but was ultimately cancelled (likely due to the liquidation of Argonaut Games). Concept art for the game was released, notably featuring a military theme compared to the original, with both the Ranx and the Kappa Captain getting redesigns, a new enemy called the "Top Droid", and various props and weapons. Additionally, it seems that the sequel would have featured Halo, a character that was supposed to appear in the original game as the Ninja's girlfriend but was ultimately scrapped.
The Noise, Pepperman, and The Vigilante were all planned to be playable at some point - Vigilante and Noise were both intended to be regular playable characters, while Pepperman was intended as a one-level only character on Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator, much like Gustavo & Brick. All 3 of them have code and animations left over in the game, of varying compatability. The Noise would later be re-added in a future update due to all of his animations being completed.
Leftover files for Yoshitaka Mine, the antagonist of Yakuza 3, can be found in the files for Yakuza Kiwami, suggesting that he may have been planned to appear in a substory in a similar way to how Yakuza 2's main antagonist, Ryuji Goda, was a substory character in Yakuza 0.
While Navi does not appear in Twilight Princess, she has unused lines and sound effects which can be found in the game's data, including those which may have been intended to be heard from the Wii Remote speaker in the Wii version.
In Speed Highway, several billboards can be found depicting an unknown female character. In 2020, Satoshi Okano, a former designer at Sega who worked on Sonic Adventure, revealed that this was a scrapped spider character he designed with the prototype name "Spider Girl", and posted an old sketch of the character alongside a sketch of another scrapped character, a bat named "Fly the Vampire". In 2023, Okano posted an inked version of the original Spider Girl sketch from the same time period alongside several inked sketches from the development of Samba de Amigo. Spider Girl's appearance on the billboards in Sonic Adventure suggests that the character lasted far enough into the game's development to receive a 3D model, but the character was ultimately scrapped for unknown reasons, and this 3D model has yet to surface on its own. It's unknown what role either Spider Girl or Fly were intended to have, though fans have noted that Spider Girl has some similarities to Rouge the Bat from Sonic Adventure 2, namely that both characters have large bosoms and prominent heart-based/romantic imagery.
Prior to the creation of Bubsy, Accolade tried to encourage Michael Berlyn to use Cheetos mascot Chester Cheetah instead of creating a new character for the game, but Berlyn convinced them by pointing out how creating a new character would be cheaper than licensing out an established mascot.
Treasure president Masato Maegawa and Alien Soldier director Hideyuki Suganami had big ideas in mind for the potential of the game's bosses, with two ideas being thrown around to add a boss with 100 or even 1000 transformations, or a boss with 100 moving/multi-jointed parts. Neither of these ideas were added due to time constraints, but Maegawa still took pride in this early idea for motivating them to further develop the multi-jointed sprite animations in the final game.
In 2013, a Kingdom Hearts online mobile game was in development that never saw the light of day. It was to be called "Kingdom Hearts: Fragmented Keys". The game was rumored to feature customizable avatar characters (like Union Cross). It would also have been in 3D instead of Union cross' 2D art style. Most interesting and exciting of all though (gathered from concept art no less) was the Disney world list as the game would feature returning worlds like: Agrabah, Wonderland, a Lilo & Stitch Hawaii world, Space Paranoids/The Grid, London/Neverland, and Dwarf Woodlands. It also included worlds that didn't appear in the series yet but would appear in later games like Union Cross and Kingdom Hearts III, such as: Arendell (Frozen), Kingdom of Corona (Tangled), and Niceland/Game Central Station (Wreck-It Ralph). Finally, and most shockingly, a world based on the Star Wars franchise, although this world's chronology is unknown as concept art show different conflicting eras, such as an image of characters Anakin, Obi-wan, Padme, and Master Yoda in their exact looks from Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie and series in a separatist gunship's hanger as well as a planet that looks similar to Tatooine and an anachronistic Death Star power station room. It is unknown why this game was cancelled.
If one moves Hank's Microsoft Agent actor file into the the main Microsoft Bob application, he can be used as a main Bob assistant, complete with his own character bio, suggesting that he was meant to be part of the wider Microsoft Bob program. Some of his text is generic placeholders and he does not have a background (instead using a close-up of what appears to be his knee or elbow).
Various models and textures of Ittle Dew from Slap City are inside the files of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, as she was used as a placeholder during development.
The developers of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale expressed that they wanted Mario as a playable character in the game as a nod to the Super Smash Bros. series.
In a 2023 leak of unreleased content from different iOS games, an app titled Angry Birds Island - or alternatively Angry Birds Hatchery - was discovered. The prototype was simply a version of the original Angry Birds with two major differences
One of the enemies Sabre and Krystal would encounter in Dinosaur Planet were these robotic Scorpion-like automatons, typically found in Krazoa-build strongholds such as the Force Point Temples and Cape Claw. While removed in the final Star Fox Adventures, they could still be found hidden within the E3 2002 kiosk version via hacking.
In Mario Kart 64's Bowser's Castle, one can see what appears to be a green Thwomp locked up in a jail cell - this Thwomp is not actually green, but simply lit in a way that makes him appear as such.
In Speed Highway, several billboards can be found depicting an unknown female character. In 2020, Satoshi Okano, a former designer at Sega who worked on Sonic Adventure, revealed that this was a scrapped spider character he designed with the prototype name "Spider Girl", and posted an old sketch of the character alongside a sketch of another scrapped character, a bat named "Fly the Vampire". In 2023, Okano posted an inked version of the original Spider Girl sketch from the same time period alongside several inked sketches from the development of Samba de Amigo. Spider Girl's appearance on the billboards in Sonic Adventure suggests that the character lasted far enough into the game's development to receive a 3D model, but the character was ultimately scrapped for unknown reasons, and this 3D model has yet to surface on its own. It's unknown what role either Spider Girl or Fly were intended to have, though fans have noted that Spider Girl has some similarities to Rouge the Bat from Sonic Adventure 2, namely that both characters have large bosoms and prominent heart-based/romantic imagery.
In 2013, a Kingdom Hearts online mobile game was in development that never saw the light of day. It was to be called "Kingdom Hearts: Fragmented Keys". The game was rumored to feature customizable avatar characters (like Union Cross). It would also have been in 3D instead of Union cross' 2D art style. Most interesting and exciting of all though (gathered from concept art no less) was the Disney world list as the game would feature returning worlds like: Agrabah, Wonderland, a Lilo & Stitch Hawaii world, Space Paranoids/The Grid, London/Neverland, and Dwarf Woodlands. It also included worlds that didn't appear in the series yet but would appear in later games like Union Cross and Kingdom Hearts III, such as: Arendell (Frozen), Kingdom of Corona (Tangled), and Niceland/Game Central Station (Wreck-It Ralph). Finally, and most shockingly, a world based on the Star Wars franchise, although this world's chronology is unknown as concept art show different conflicting eras, such as an image of characters Anakin, Obi-wan, Padme, and Master Yoda in their exact looks from Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie and series in a separatist gunship's hanger as well as a planet that looks similar to Tatooine and an anachronistic Death Star power station room. It is unknown why this game was cancelled.
If one moves Hank's Microsoft Agent actor file into the the main Microsoft Bob application, he can be used as a main Bob assistant, complete with his own character bio, suggesting that he was meant to be part of the wider Microsoft Bob program. Some of his text is generic placeholders and he does not have a background (instead using a close-up of what appears to be his knee or elbow).
In the files of Chicken Run, there is an unused model for Edwina, a character who dies and gets eaten early into the movie.