In late 2018, a trailer for the film's sequel "Ralph Breaks the Internet" premiered on TV as part of Disney Channel's "Movie Surfers" series. The first half of the trailer used almost 40 seconds of cutscenes from the 2012 Wii game based on the first movie, and used unreleased higher quality renders of these cutscenes rather than the compressed footage released in the game. This trailer also features a noticeably bad, ad-libbed narration from an unknown actor portraying Ralph; this actor does not sound like the original film's actor John C. Reilly, nor the soundalike actor used in the Wii game and commercials Brian T. Delaney. Considering the overall confusing cheapness of the trailer, it's not known why the show's producers chose to use unreleased HD renders of these cutscenes instead of footage from the first film, which they had to have had access to and would have matched the visual quality of the film's sequel better.
In 2019, UK bargain store Aldi attempted a publicity stunt known as the "Teatime Takedown", where parents would send Aldi their childrens' usernames on gaming platforms (with the service being provided for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, and unusually the streaming platform Twitch) and the supermarket would send professional gamers to defeat the child in-game so they would eat their food, though Aldi claimed that the effectiveness of the program may vary. Despite a released commercial for the campaign showing children "rage quitting" FPS games, the hired eSports teams, originating from Veloce, specialized in racing games. This sparked massive backlash within the UK eSports community, to the point where Resolve eSports offered to send its players to help kids fight back against the bullies. Aldi would eventually cancel the campaign and send coupons to those who complained as a form of apology. Print adverts were made, but are not known to have been printed in any magazines or catalogues, and radio and till reciept ads were planned.
The reptilian puffs of smoke that emerge when Mario ground pounds inside a giant Goomba Shoe in the Super Mario Bros. 3 style of the Super Mario Maker series are updated sprites from an unreleased and highly experimental Super Nintendo prototype known as Super Donkey.
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.
Despite Floigan Bros. being initially developed prior to the Dreamcast's release in 1999 (of which the main characters Moigle and Hoigle made cameos in the Dreamcast advertising campaign "It's Thinking"), and then-President of SEGA's American division Bernie Stolar saying that "Floigan will do for SEGA what Mario did for Nintendo", the game would go through developmental setbacks until finally releasing on July 30, 2001, months after SEGA ceased production on SEGA Dreamcast.
Because of this late release window, several pieces of monthly on-disc DLC for the game, as well as the concept of exchanging Moigles through the Dreamcast VMU, were left on the cutting room floor.
El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera was intended to be developed over a span of 12 months. However, due to the cartoon being abruptly cancelled the game was developed over 2 months instead, with a greatly reduced budget, and a planned Wii version being cancelled.
Dutch electronics company Philips planned to release a Donkey Kong game for the CD-i as part of the deal with Nintendo that led to the release of Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure. The Donkey Kong game's existence was alluded to in two "Gaming Gossip" articles by Electronic Gaming Monthly as well as a trade ad which depicted Donkey Kong exiting a limousine alongside Mario, Link, and Zelda. However, more concrete evidence for the game's existence didn't emerge until former Riedel Software Productions employee Adrian Jackson-Jones included a post on his LinkedIn page stating that he programmed the engine for it (the LinkedIn post incorrectly cites Australian visual effects studio Rising Sun Pictures due to them sharing initials). This information was then brought to public attention in 2022 by the LostMediaWiki, a website which documents searches for lost or otherwise publicly unavailable works.
An investigation by Time Extension led to writer John Szczepaniak getting in contact with both Jackson-Jones and Riedel Software Productions owner Michael J. Riedel. Both parties have little memory of the Donkey Kong game due to the amount of time that passed and the company's habit of erasing their data for cancelled projects. Additionally, Jackson-Jones revealed that due to a memory disorder, he recalls little about the game other than his direct experiences programming it. Despite this, Jackson-Jones was able to confirm his involvement with the Donkey Kong game, stating that one of the biggest difficulties during development was the CD-i's memory limitations, which were circumvented by only loading in assets that would be visible on-screen, using the player's movement to determine what to put into memory.
According to Fruit Ninja creator Luke Muscat in a comment on a YouTube video comparing the 1993 and 2023 Super Mario Bros. movies, there was a massive push following Fruit Ninja's success to have it be adapted for TV or cinema, something he attributed to other members of the studio feeling that the other 2 mediums were more "legitimate" in the face of an era where games were not taken as seriously. All of the characters and stories added to Fruit Ninja were made for the purpose of facilitating these unmade adaptations, something Muscat described as "divisive" and compared to having to try and adapt a film that does not exist into a game rather than the other way around.
Comment archived in case it gets deleted (YouTube link contains a comment hyperlink tag): "Great video Patrick and team. I was the designer / creator of Fruit Ninja, which obviously had absolutely ZERO story or character development. After the huge success of the game, (and as I was leaving the project), a push started to get film and TV adaptions made. For some at the studio, getting an adaptation made the whole thing more legitimate, like the property had "made it". Games were still struggling to be taken seriously despite being such a huge global business, but film and TV didn't have that problem. But given how narratively thin the source material was, new characters and story started getting added into the game specifically to support those future jumps to film and TV (and merch I guess). This was very... divisive. It was like having to adapt a film into an existing game... except the film didn't exist yet. It was a time."
Some concepts considered for alternate games to use unsold Radar Scope cabinets for if Donkey Kong couldn't be developed were a Jack & the Beanstalk game, a fishing game, a space shuttle construction game due to space shuttles being a hot news topic at the time, and a game about fighting a disease in the human body, based on a movie (likely Fantastic Voyage).
Hard 'n' Heavy was originally conceived as a sequel to The Great Giana Sisters titled Giana 2 - Arthur and Martha in Future World, but was changed due to the threats the developers had received from Nintendo over the previous Giana game. Screenshots and a box art for Giana 2 exist, and show that seemingly only the character of Giana was removed in the transition to Hard 'n' Heavy, but the version of the game with Giana is not known to exist.
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.
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.
Bio Force Ape is a game that was never released - it did, before it's cancellation, get a spotlight in Nintendo Power, creating a level of curiosity surrounding it within NES fan communities. Capitalizing off of this curiosity, a post would be made on the Digital Press forum in 2005 claiming to show screenshots of a leaked prototype. While the first post appeared legitimate, the hoax would eventually be unraveled starting with a screenshot of a glitched super move that was "so powerful [that] it messes up the game's graphics", which humorously made it appear that Bio Force Ape was unleashing a powerful fart attack, as a set of glitched graphics appeared next to a crouching animation. The poster, going under the username PaulB812, would refuse to dump the game and refer to anybody who asked for it to be released as either "communists" or "butter-slathered... hoarding fatties", before finally unveiling the prank with a game screenshot of a cutscene where a fat butter monster points out that the ape is "worth 2K monies[sic]", before the ape punches him while saying "EAT COMMUNISM!" A real prototype would be leaked in 2010.
A "2.0" version of SkiFree was in development in 1993, which would've had online multiplayer; improved physics; AI opponents; and sound, however the physics ended up being corrupted and the source code was lost, so it could not be finished. SkiFree creator Chris Pirih's website has voice clips of the game's sasquatch that may have originated from this version.
When the PlayStation 2 was revealed in Japan, a demo was shown off of a fountain of spark particles. When this demo was shown to Jon Burton, founder of Traveller's Tales, he coded an identical tech demo for the first PlayStation as a joke. This tech demo would ultimately end up in the files of Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!, unused, by accident.
In the weeks prior to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2's release, a near-complete prototype build of the game leaked online. The Twitter account for the game's main developer, Fair Play Labs, accidentally retweeted a GIF of SpongeBob dancing from an unrevealed sound test mode and promptly deleted it. Community manager Thaddeus Crews expressed that, while he didn't have a particular moral problem with fans playing the leaked build, he advised against competitive players using it for practice due to how outdated it is.
The 3DS version of Imagine Babyz has unused content pertaining to what seems to be an unreleased 2D shoot 'em up titled Sound Rider. There is a title screen, multiple ship and bullet sprites, and two MOD tracker-styled songs.
The NES demake of Pac-Man Championship Edition, featured in 2020's Namco Museum Archives Volume 1, was originally created as an unauthorized fan project by homebrew developer coke774 in 2008.
Roy E. Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney, was not informed that The Walt Disney Company's licensing department had granted Sega the rights to develop a Fantasia video game until after its release. He had previously promised Walt before his death that merchandising deals would not be made for Fantasia, resulting in the game's withdrawal from sale after roughly 100 days.
In 2019, UK bargain store Aldi attempted a publicity stunt known as the "Teatime Takedown", where parents would send Aldi their childrens' usernames on gaming platforms (with the service being provided for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, and unusually the streaming platform Twitch) and the supermarket would send professional gamers to defeat the child in-game so they would eat their food, though Aldi claimed that the effectiveness of the program may vary. Despite a released commercial for the campaign showing children "rage quitting" FPS games, the hired eSports teams, originating from Veloce, specialized in racing games. This sparked massive backlash within the UK eSports community, to the point where Resolve eSports offered to send its players to help kids fight back against the bullies. Aldi would eventually cancel the campaign and send coupons to those who complained as a form of apology. Print adverts were made, but are not known to have been printed in any magazines or catalogues, and radio and till reciept ads were planned.
The reptilian puffs of smoke that emerge when Mario ground pounds inside a giant Goomba Shoe in the Super Mario Bros. 3 style of the Super Mario Maker series are updated sprites from an unreleased and highly experimental Super Nintendo prototype known as Super Donkey.
A prototype build for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale shows an early character select screen with a set of unused characters:
Dutch electronics company Philips planned to release a Donkey Kong game for the CD-i as part of the deal with Nintendo that led to the release of Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure. The Donkey Kong game's existence was alluded to in two "Gaming Gossip" articles by Electronic Gaming Monthly as well as a trade ad which depicted Donkey Kong exiting a limousine alongside Mario, Link, and Zelda. However, more concrete evidence for the game's existence didn't emerge until former Riedel Software Productions employee Adrian Jackson-Jones included a post on his LinkedIn page stating that he programmed the engine for it (the LinkedIn post incorrectly cites Australian visual effects studio Rising Sun Pictures due to them sharing initials). This information was then brought to public attention in 2022 by the LostMediaWiki, a website which documents searches for lost or otherwise publicly unavailable works.
Hard 'n' Heavy was originally conceived as a sequel to The Great Giana Sisters titled Giana 2 - Arthur and Martha in Future World, but was changed due to the threats the developers had received from Nintendo over the previous Giana game. Screenshots and a box art for Giana 2 exist, and show that seemingly only the character of Giana was removed in the transition to Hard 'n' Heavy, but the version of the game with Giana is not known to exist.
Bio Force Ape is a game that was never released - it did, before it's cancellation, get a spotlight in Nintendo Power, creating a level of curiosity surrounding it within NES fan communities. Capitalizing off of this curiosity, a post would be made on the Digital Press forum in 2005 claiming to show screenshots of a leaked prototype. While the first post appeared legitimate, the hoax would eventually be unraveled starting with a screenshot of a glitched super move that was "so powerful [that] it messes up the game's graphics", which humorously made it appear that Bio Force Ape was unleashing a powerful fart attack, as a set of glitched graphics appeared next to a crouching animation. The poster, going under the username PaulB812, would refuse to dump the game and refer to anybody who asked for it to be released as either "communists" or "butter-slathered... hoarding fatties", before finally unveiling the prank with a game screenshot of a cutscene where a fat butter monster points out that the ape is "worth 2K monies[sic]", before the ape punches him while saying "EAT COMMUNISM!" A real prototype would be leaked in 2010.
A "2.0" version of SkiFree was in development in 1993, which would've had online multiplayer; improved physics; AI opponents; and sound, however the physics ended up being corrupted and the source code was lost, so it could not be finished. SkiFree creator Chris Pirih's website has voice clips of the game's sasquatch that may have originated from this version.
In the weeks prior to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2's release, a near-complete prototype build of the game leaked online. The Twitter account for the game's main developer, Fair Play Labs, accidentally retweeted a GIF of SpongeBob dancing from an unrevealed sound test mode and promptly deleted it. Community manager Thaddeus Crews expressed that, while he didn't have a particular moral problem with fans playing the leaked build, he advised against competitive players using it for practice due to how outdated it is.
The 3DS version of Imagine Babyz has unused content pertaining to what seems to be an unreleased 2D shoot 'em up titled Sound Rider. There is a title screen, multiple ship and bullet sprites, and two MOD tracker-styled songs.
