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.
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.
Swampy, the protagonist of the Disney mobile game Where's My Water?, was added to the game data for Disney Emoji Blitz as part of the 1.11.5 update, released on May 10, 2017. Despite this, however, he has not been added to the game as an obtainable emoji and no design for him exists in the game's data, with the inactive code still being present in later versions.
Kabuto, the first boss of Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, is a parody of Ken-O, a recurring first boss in the Shinobi series - in prerelease screenshots, he is shown to be a composite parody of both Ken-O and Nintendo's Mario, known as Mari-Oh. While his appearance would lose its Mario-esque qualities in the final game, two elements of this parody would remain: Kabuto shooting fireballs, and Kabuto becoming small on his final hit point.
When Sonic Classic Collection was rated by the British Board of Film Classification, they rated three pieces of content not present in the final game: •A trailer for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood •A "history of Sonic" documentary video •An unknown item titled "GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE", which was most likely a video. However, all other non-interactive elements in the game such as the credits and aforementioned videos have a runtime, which GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE does not.
Inside the files of M&M's Kart Racing is a placeholder loading screen image showing what appears to be a 3D render of a 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 photoshopped over the Red M&M driving his kart copied and pasted over and over erratically.
Warbirds was intended to be included in the base version Atari 50, but was cut at the last second - physical Switch releases of the compilation include Warbirds on the cartridge, but a day one update removed the game. Warbirds has since been reinstated.
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.
Kabuto, the first boss of Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, is a parody of Ken-O, a recurring first boss in the Shinobi series - in prerelease screenshots, he is shown to be a composite parody of both Ken-O and Nintendo's Mario, known as Mari-Oh. While his appearance would lose its Mario-esque qualities in the final game, two elements of this parody would remain: Kabuto shooting fireballs, and Kabuto becoming small on his final hit point.
Inside the files of M&M's Kart Racing is a placeholder loading screen image showing what appears to be a 3D render of a 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 photoshopped over the Red M&M driving his kart copied and pasted over and over erratically.
Warbirds was intended to be included in the base version Atari 50, but was cut at the last second - physical Switch releases of the compilation include Warbirds on the cartridge, but a day one update removed the game. Warbirds has since been reinstated.