In the castle courtyard in Super Mario 64, there is a plaque to a power star with an illegible name written below, often interpreted as either "Eternal Star" or "L is Real 2401" - with the latter being more popular for how it could be seen as a cryptic hint towards unlocking Luigi.
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.
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".
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To save development time and resources, the splash screen artwork for each of the Sailor Senshi superimposes their heads and uniforms onto a nude base model. Despite the clothes obscuring most of the base's body, it is unusually detailed; according to Lynn Okamoto, who designed the game's graphics, this was because the game was planned to feature alternate costumes for the playable cast, such as their civilian clothes and swimsuits.
Because of time constraints, however, this feature was never implemented, with the only remnant being a cheat code that renders the player's character barefoot on the splash screen. The code requires the player to press Down, Down, Down, Right, Right, Right, Up, Up, Up, Left, Left, Left, Up, Down, Right, Left during the sequence when a spotlight moves around a screen and highlights Luna.
Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt / World Class Track Meet has unused graphics from Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, which can be activated by a Game Genie code, allowing one to play SMB1 levels with The Lost Levels graphics, albeit with some glitched tiles in different parts of the game.
Game & Watch Gallery 3 has a crude unused placeholder title screen with Wiggler on it. This already unused piece of content itself has unused sprites of its own that don't show up when the screen is activated - including Fly Guys, flowers, a crocodile, sleeping men, and - very morbidly - Mario and Luigi roasting a whole rotisserie Pikachu.
Among files uncovered in the Gigaleak, a large-scale leak of assets from Nintendo's internal servers in 2020, are various assets from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island depicting alternate ideas for Baby Mario. The earliest of these assets are a series of sprites from October 1993 depicting him in a bonnet and with a mustache similar to his adult counterpart; by comparison, the earliest sprites depicting his final design are dated to August 1994.
In the interim, however, Nintendo apparently considered omitting Baby Mario entirely; sprites dating to the spring of 1994 show that the developers considered having the Yoshi Clan ferry an infant wizard around instead. These sprites depict the wizard both in normal gameplay and in the pre-rendered CGI graphics used in the opening cutscene. Other sprites of the wizard show that they would've provided an in-universe reason for Yoshi's ability to transform into various vehicles: the wizard would cast a spell on a Yoshi egg while encasing themself and the real Yoshi in a bubble.
While the developers ultimately went back to using Baby Mario, the wizard still appears in a prototype build from December 6, 1994. In this iteration, the wizard is a form that Baby Mario can turn into through the use of an item depicting the projectiles fired by Kamek in the penultimate area of "6-8: King Bowser's Castle". This "Wizard Mario" form could similarly cast spells that transform certain enemies into objects such as eggs, watermelons, and Winged Clouds.
A prototype build for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale shows an early character select screen with a set of unused characters:
•Chop Chop Master Onion from the PaRappa the Rapper series •Captain Blasto from Blasto •Buzz from the Buzz! series •A Big Kulche from the LocoRoco series •Dr. Nefarious from the Ratchet & Clank series •A Eucadian Soldier from Warhawk •A knight from Fat Princess •Um Jammer Lammy from the PaRappa the Rapper series
Notably, Dr. Nefarious is featured in the roster without Ratchet or Clank. PaRappa the Rapper is the most represented series in this roster, and has more characters than any one series would get in the final game including DLC. The knight would appear in Fat Princess' moveset, LocoRoco and Buzz! would be represented through stages, and Blasto would be absent completely.
In the European version of The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland for Game Boy Color, there is a friendly message to hackers:
Hello There Pilgrim...
If you have hacked this ROM, you no doubt are reading this text. This game is basically a 2 Meg. Game. However, Nintendo, in their infinite wisdom, has decreed that the smallest ROM they will produce for the Gameboy Color is 8 Meg. -- Now, what to put in that empty 6 Meg.? So, the developers of the game decided to put .GIF pictures of themselves into the game. Why not? Might as well fill the void with something entertaining. See if you can retrieve them from this ROM. If you do, you win the prize. Please call (609) 466-2092 (in New Jersey, USA) if you have been able to view the two .GIF pictures, located in the rest of the upper 6 Megs of this ROM. We will have a nice reward for you...
Good Luck!
Roger W. Amidon September 28, 2000
The described graphics do indeed exist within the game code. It is unknown who the first person to discover the images were, or if and how they were rewarded. Sadly, Roger W. Amidon has since passed away.
In Super Fall Brawl, one of the many reskins of Jingle Brawl, the new character was intended to be Sheen Estevez from Jimmy Neutron, in promotion for his then-new spin-off series Planet Sheen. However, Sheen was not coded correctly, making him near-impossible to beat in a fight. The game's second update would remove Sheen and his stage completely, and he would never be added back in, making Fall Brawl the only Super Brawl game without any new combatants. Sheen would return in Super Brawl 2, though the House of Pain stage, based on the first episode of Planet Sheen, would be swapped for a Zeenu stage generally based on Planet Sheen instead of a single episode.
During the game's roster reveal in 2022, an image for WWE Superstar Elias featured him in an outfit that he had never been seen in. At the time, Elias had not been seen in WWE for 9 months as they had planned to re-package him in a new gimmick, but the new gimmick was deemed, "too Macho Man" and was scrapped. The render was likely made during this time, and shows what his outfit would have atleast looked like.
This render would eventually be changed in the final game, with him still using his musician gimmick. Elias would later return to WWE as "Ezekiel" (the younger brother of Elias) with a clean shaven face, shorter hair, and the same outfit seen in this early render.
18 years after the game's release, on September 16th 2017, a Silent Hill fan community member by the name of roocker666 posted images of never before seen enemies hidden in the game's files online. These formerly unseen creatures include a giant headless frog (FRG), a possibly monkey based creature (MKY), an ostrich like creature (OST), a purple moth (BTFY), a manta ray (El), and a faceless snake (SNK).
Three additional models were discovered at a later date, including beta versions of the Larval Stalker and the Grey Children, and most notably a giant chicken (CKN) that was bigger than the others and is thought to have been intended to be a boss character.
Masahiro Ito, the game's background and creature designer, acknowledged the discovery on Twitter, but had no comment regarding the original purpose of the models.
In a pre-release gameplay video from 2018, at the end of a tour of the Home Base, a lit sign featuring the logo for the pizza restaurant chain Domino's can be seen hanging on a wall near the refrigerator. This sign would be removed in the final game, but within the game's files are several voice lines spoken by the game's main cast (Coco, Davis, Eva, Io, Jack, Louis, Mia, Rin and Yakumo) talking about eating freshly delivered pizza in an unusually glorifying manner without mentioning the company by name. It's unclear how these voice clips would have been used in the game, but when taken with the unused Domino's sign, it's believed that this was all part of a planned promotional tie-in that fell through when the game was delayed to 2019, where Domino's would have somehow survived the apocalypse in the game's story and adapted to the Revenants and the Lost.
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.
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.
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.
The game's files contain a pair of unused name labels, one for the life bar and another for the VS screen which read as "Franken" and "Frankenstein" respectively. These were likely abandoned names for Victor, the Frankenstein's monster-based character.
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.
In the castle courtyard in Super Mario 64, there is a plaque to a power star with an illegible name written below, often interpreted as either "Eternal Star" or "L is Real 2401" - with the latter being more popular for how it could be seen as a cryptic hint towards unlocking Luigi. 
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.
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".
Game & Watch Gallery 3 has a crude unused placeholder title screen with Wiggler on it. This already unused piece of content itself has unused sprites of its own that don't show up when the screen is activated - including Fly Guys, flowers, a crocodile, sleeping men, and - very morbidly - Mario and Luigi roasting a whole rotisserie Pikachu.
Among files uncovered in the Gigaleak, a large-scale leak of assets from Nintendo's internal servers in 2020, are various assets from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island depicting alternate ideas for Baby Mario. The earliest of these assets are a series of sprites from October 1993 depicting him in a bonnet and with a mustache similar to his adult counterpart; by comparison, the earliest sprites depicting his final design are dated to August 1994.
A prototype build for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale shows an early character select screen with a set of unused characters:
In the European version of The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland for Game Boy Color, there is a friendly message to hackers:
During the game's roster reveal in 2022, an image for WWE Superstar Elias featured him in an outfit that he had never been seen in. At the time, Elias had not been seen in WWE for 9 months as they had planned to re-package him in a new gimmick, but the new gimmick was deemed, "too Macho Man" and was scrapped. The render was likely made during this time, and shows what his outfit would have atleast looked like.
The game's User Guide shows that the options menu at some point in development displayed the Quit Button instead of the Demos and Credits button.
18 years after the game's release, on September 16th 2017, a Silent Hill fan community member by the name of roocker666 posted images of never before seen enemies hidden in the game's files online. These formerly unseen creatures include a giant headless frog (FRG), a possibly monkey based creature (MKY), an ostrich like creature (OST), a purple moth (BTFY), a manta ray (El), and a faceless snake (SNK).
In a pre-release gameplay video from 2018, at the end of a tour of the Home Base, a lit sign featuring the logo for the pizza restaurant chain Domino's can be seen hanging on a wall near the refrigerator. This sign would be removed in the final game, but within the game's files are several voice lines spoken by the game's main cast (Coco, Davis, Eva, Io, Jack, Louis, Mia, Rin and Yakumo) talking about eating freshly delivered pizza in an unusually glorifying manner without mentioning the company by name. It's unclear how these voice clips would have been used in the game, but when taken with the unused Domino's sign, it's believed that this was all part of a planned promotional tie-in that fell through when the game was delayed to 2019, where Domino's would have somehow survived the apocalypse in the game's story and adapted to the Revenants and the Lost.
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.
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):
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.
The game's files contain a pair of unused name labels, one for the life bar and another for the VS screen which read as "Franken" and "Frankenstein" respectively. These were likely abandoned names for Victor, the Frankenstein's monster-based character.
