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In the code of the Game Boy Advance version of Defender, there is a sultry message:
Pokémon Puzzle Challenge has an unused title screen reading Pokémon Puzzle League, implying that it once shared a name with its Nintendo 64 counterpart.
Based on evidence from the book Video Game Quest and unused graphics within the game's code, Snoopy's Magic Show was likely originally going to be an original IP, with the title of either Death Ball or Heart Attack.
Death Stalker contains a long hidden message in its code, which includes calls for hires, promotions for other games by the same developer and publisher, and perhaps most interestingly, a message from the writer about how he had been locked out of his car:
Hello, good evening & wellcome to Qualtan, or Death Stalker in official form! Brought to you & (c) of course, by TAG computer games. We at TAG have always wondered why you hackers don't do something contructive like writing games! If you wan't to talk to us about this subject then ring HULL (0482) 215320 & have a chat. ( do this anyway if you like! we're also after graphic artists , games testers & designers. ) Watch out for 'Ninja Massacre' its beaut!! Hope you liked '19 boot camp' we did! Coming soon, Touchlight from Palace. Hello to Rogue who are writing the CBM version , featuring the first ever 16 colour HW scroll! More games from Codemasters later in the year! I am currently stranded in the TAG office because my car is locked in the multi story car park ! , just thought you might be interested. Thanks to PDS for the wonderfull Pd system, its wonderfull! TAG - the worlds first vegetarian computer company. We love Codemasters! Especially Mark, Tim, Richard & David! but is it TRUE or FALSE we ask? Fact is often stranger than fiction! more so where computers are concerned! Who was Paragon? Who are Tiertex? What is Artic ? South Hunsley , Britains crappist school! I know! theres loads more buffer left, but I've 20 miles to walk home!
[The original message contains no line breaks; they were added by The Cutting Room Floor for readability.]
Atari: 80 Classic Games in One! contains two unused ROMs created to test the emulators used in the compilation. Interestingly, the .txt file that contains the descriptions of all the featured games also has explanations of what these ROMs are, suggesting that they may have at one point been planned to be included as bonus content on the compilation for regular players:
"[colours] What is this? This ROM was created as part of the development process for ^RAtari 80 Classic Games^0[sic]. This ROM was transferred into a genuine first generation Atari 2600 (bought by the lead programmer's family back in 1977!) via a Cuttlecart. It cycles through all the available colours in the Atari 2600 palette, displaying the colour's number as a binary "bar code" at the top. The output of the Atari 2600 was hooked up to a video capture card, and each frame was digitised and its colour ID determined by reading the bar code on the image. All frames of the same colour were then averaged together to get an average "RGB" colour value for that number. This process was used to get accu- rate colour matches with the original Atari 2600. [sound] What is this? This ROM was created as part of the development process for ^RAtari 80 Classic Games^0[sic]. This ROM was transferred into a genuine first gener- ation Atari 2600 (bought by the lead programmer's family back in 1977!) via a Cuttlecart. It plays a sound sequence consisting of a one second low- volume beep, 1 second of silence, and then 4 seconds of a particular Atari 2600 "voice", followed by another 1 second of silence. Each of the available voices is played in turn at a preset frequency. (Once all voices were played, the frequency would change and the process would repeat.) The output was captured via a PC's
^G(more...) Page 2 ^G(...more)
sound card and a program found the sound's fundamental pattern. These captures were used to generate accurate sound matches with the Atari 2600.
Note: The left difficulty must be in the B position for the sounds to start."
J. Langston III's original name during development was J. Langston Popsicle III, or "Popsicle" for short, but had to be changed due to Popsicle being trademarked by Unilever. Multiple lines were spliced to remove "Popsicle", though one was removed and one was re-recorded.
There are four unused voice clips intended for the Newscaster on Putt Putt's radio that appears to be a developer in-joke. When put together they read:
"A criminal suit was filed against Mr. Firebird. He is accused of purposeful wrong-doing and criminal neglect. It is believed that Mr. Firebird's negligence caused Putt-Putt's unfortunate accident earlier today."
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In the demo version of Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, there is an unused graphic of a hippopotamus with the satirical in-joke text:
HIPPOPOTAMUSE[sic]
These fat bastards sit around on their backsides all day drinking beer and pissing into pools of water.
On the hippopotamus' stomach is a can of Moose Head Beer, a recurring joke in other hidden content in the game referencing the Canadian brewery Moosehead Breweries.
Inside the code for the SNES version of Daze Before Christmas are a set of mostly Christmas-related quotes and messages:
Any dramatic game the producers want us to take seriously as a representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a representation of anything -- except a game to be ignored by anyone capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously. -- Richard Schickel (slightly modified)
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop quickly. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph. -- Shirley Temple
Traveler's Tales had intended to slide a Christian Easter egg into Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!, inserting a sticker on a suitcase reading "JOHN 3:16", a citation for a Bible verse reading:
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life"
When Disney saw it, they insisted that it be removed, so in the final game the sticker simply reads "NY CITY".
Courage the Cowardly Dog: Creep TV has secret codes and maps that went undiscovered until 20 years after its release due to a glitch making them inaccessible. The codes include the "daScore" code, which shows a counter of how many ghosts you've zapped, and the "mirage" code, which expands the game map infinitely and allows access to the secret maps. On one of these maps, you can acquire a pair of glasses as an unused item, and another map containing an oasis in the Middle of Nowhere that also has a sign simply reading Eustace's catchphrase, "STUPID DOG!". However, if you use the glasses to read the sign, it will instead say "Wee...amazing! You found it! GOOD DOG!"
Inside the files of the 1998 version of JumpStart Baby is a military-themed mission select graphic titled "DEFCON 4: THE ALISA FILES". The origin of this file and how it ended up in a game like JumpStart Baby is unknown.
According to director Toshiyuki Kusakihara, he wrote out an extensive history for the continent of Fódlan from the beginning and containing "probably a good ten-thousand years' worth of material" just to use as reference materials for development. However, he has stated that he would not release it, and expected more inquisitive players to analyze the story and fill in the holes themselves as the developers gradually forget the material over time.
There's unused annoucer files calling "P5 Hero" and "Persona 5 Hero" suggesting that the protagonist of Persona 5 was at some point planned to be in the roster
The Pokémon Toedscool and Toedscruel (divergent evolutions of Tentacool and Tentacruel) are called "OKAKINGU" and "OKAGYARADOSU" in the game's data respectively. This is interesting as these names seem to instead reference the names of Magikarp, called "Koiking" in Japan, and its evolution Gyarados respectively, meaning that the games were originally going to feature a pair of divergent evolutions for the Gyarados family instead of the Tentacruel family. However, there is no other data in the games but names for these scrapped Pokémon.
An early title screen in the game data suggests the game's original title was "Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Universe". For unknown reasons, the "Universe" part was dropped.
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The game contains a lot of debug text, starting at offset 0xC6370 and mixing with the rest of the game's text. Of note, two dates appear in the debug text that may be the dates the game finished development in North America and Europe:
North America: Jun 6 1997.21:45:51 Europe: Nov 17 1997.20:23:27
The rest of this submission contains a few examples of the debug text scattered throughout the ROM. Most of it is routine stuff, but there are some interesting gems in there. The developers were certainly not in a good mood or this was "kinda" a joke from them. Note that "tell dave" likely refers to David Pridie, one of the programmers:
"*** GAME CRASH CONFIRMED!!! ***
ERRRRRRORRR
*** WARNING! generatelevel.c -> PlacePiece is going to plot z+1!
*** ERROR! generatelevel.c -> PlacePiece did not function to avoid breaking a piece!
Pokémon Puzzle Challenge has an unused title screen reading Pokémon Puzzle League, implying that it once shared a name with its Nintendo 64 counterpart.
Based on evidence from the book Video Game Quest and unused graphics within the game's code, Snoopy's Magic Show was likely originally going to be an original IP, with the title of either Death Ball or Heart Attack.
There are four unused voice clips intended for the Newscaster on Putt Putt's radio that appears to be a developer in-joke. When put together they read:
Inside the files of the 1998 version of JumpStart Baby is a military-themed mission select graphic titled "DEFCON 4: THE ALISA FILES". The origin of this file and how it ended up in a game like JumpStart Baby is unknown.
An early title screen in the game data suggests the game's original title was "Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Universe". For unknown reasons, the "Universe" part was dropped.
