When the Street Fighter skin set was released for Fortnite, a back bling of an arcade machine was released that would show attract mode footage from Street Fighter II. Coinciding with this, a texture was found in the data, under the name "FrenchFry" showing animation from Family Guy in a similar format. While many believed this confirmed that Peter Griffin was planned to be featured in the game alongside a back bling that would show Family Guy clips, it was later stated by a reputable Fortnite leaker named FNBRUnreleased that the Family Guy content could've only been added for one of two reasons: to annoy dataminers, or to internally test the Street Fighter graphics in a humorous way.
Griffin would eventually be added to Fortnite in Chapter 5. To coincide with his addition, a video titled "Peter Griffin Seeks Fitness Advice From Meowscles" was released: animated in the same style as "Family Guy", it features Griffin getting a fitness exam from Fortnite character Meowscles, ending with him drinking an expired bottle of Slurp Juice in order to become "swole", explaining his design in the game. The expiration date on the Slurp Juice is a reference to the date when the leak originally happened, and the trailer also used the leaked back bling. Despite appearing to be animated by Family Guy's animation department, the video noticeably does not feature any spoken dialogue, or voice acting by Family Guy creator and Griffin's voice actor Seth MacFarlane.
While the final game only uses seven different species for the Avatar, several were considered during development, such as raccoons, dogs, squirrels, rats, pigs, lizards and more. The last species to be added was narrowed down to three options: a monkey, a dragon, and a bear. The bear ultimately won out, due to being usable as a power-type character.
Eastern and Western preferences were also taken into account when deciding certain details for the Avatar. For example, eye shapes that were deemed too cute/juvenile were altered to appeal more to a Western audience. This is part of the reason why the dragon was ultimately rejected, as the devs felt it was too Eastern-centric, and wanted to prioritize more neutral animal choices.
A spider enemy was originally set to appear if the player took too long in a level, but was cut since their mechanic would run contrary to the game's focus on enemy combos.
The spider, now named Gil, would appear in a 2023 remake of the 2016 version of Annalynn as an optional enemy.
CLU, the main antagonist from the film "Tron: Legacy", was a planned playable character and boss who was scrapped very close to the game's release. A practically completed playable version of CLU was discovered in the PC version's files (this version was only missing completed UI) and can be used via modifications to the PC version. On May 20, 2016, developer Damean Lyon uploaded a short video showcasing his FX work on the playable version of the character, and revealing the character's Melee Impacts and Ground Pound Decal were developed by Darin Beaver.
The game was originally planned to feature a "Heat Meter" that kept track of how many enemies the player was able to defeat in a row. More consecutive kills would build up the player's "heat," while getting hit and spending too much time without attacking enemies would lose heat. Higher heat levels would additionally make enemies more aggressive, increase the amount of points lost from taking damage, and grant Peppino new attacks. The development team compared this mechanic to a similar one found in God Hand.
The Heat Meter was fully implemented in a demo released to Patreon backers in April of 2021, but was simplified in later builds before ultimately being removed in October of 2022 due to mixed audience responses; several animations associated with it were also reconfigured for other purposes. Despite this, graphics for the Heat Meter and code for the more aggressive enemy behavior are still present in the final game. The Pizza Slug, Shrimp Thug, and Tribe Cheese enemies would also have their high-aggression modes enabled by default.
In a 2020 interview about Luigi's Mansion 3, the game's lead producer Kensuke Tanabe (who was also the scenario writer for A Link to the Past) compared a shift during the game's development to an early idea that was scrapped during A Link to the Past's development, revealing that the game originally had multiple parallel worlds but it had to be cut down to just two—those being the worlds of Light and Dark.
"When that happens, I try not to cling to that initial idea too much. For example, this is when I was working on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. At first, we were thinking about structuring the game with numerous parallel worlds. However, in order to establish the gameplay in the end, we decided that it would be better to narrow it down to two worlds: Light and Dark. I think game development involves much work where you never know unless you actually test it out."
This game originally started out as a racing game for the Wallace & Gromit series, called "Wallace & Gromit: The Grand Tour". Unused graphics and codes relating to Wallace & Gromit can still be found within the game's data, such as codes describing the main characters' appearance, as well as pictures of Wallace, Gromit, Preston & Wendolene.
Within the game's data is an image of American pop singer Michael Jackson riding a tricycle. The image, named "test" in the game's files, has a model and animation associated with it, but neither of them are accessible.
If the player installs external NES ROMs onto the Controller Pak and selects the "Save a Letter" option at the Post Office, the game will bring up a unique menu for viewing and deleting the ROMs. Because Nintendo never officially implemented a means of installing NES ROMs onto the Controller Pak, this menu goes unused in normal gameplay. The menu is also absent from Animal Crossing and Dobutsu no Mori e+, due to the player being able to delete the ROMs directly from the GameCube's main menu.
Additionally, in the iQue version, the menu's text is corrupted, with the title appearing as garbled characters and the rest of the menu being in Japanese.
The Genesis version of the game was originally planned to use a rendition of Richard A. Whiting's "Hooray for Hollywood" arranged by the game's composer Matt Furniss instead of the story theme found in the final game. The song was most likely cut due to licensing issues.
Likely a leftover feature from debug testing, a code could be activated in earlier versions of the game that can instantly kill the characters by holding ZL/ZR/L/R/X/D-Pad Down for around 5 seconds. It could also be activated in the middle of cutscenes or while talking to NPCs. This code was removed in version 2.1.0 of the game.
The design of the Anti-Funk, the final boss of the game, originally resembled the hood of a Ku Klux Klan member. This design made it into early review copies of the game before Sega discovered its existence and rejected it, forcing the developers to change it to a skull just before the game's release. In a 2003 Xbox Nation magazine interview with series creator Greg Johnson, he elaborated on the origin of the design:
"When I was doing it, it was actually an accident. We had done a bunch of designs for the Anti-Funk, and the artist had done this unintentionally. I looked at it and said, “Wow, that’s funny. That looks like a Ku Klux Klan hat.” And then I thought about it for a second and I said, “Well hey, what better villain for these black characters who are spreading the funk than the love and this kind of oblique reference?” Because it wasn’t [obvious]—it was open to interpretation."
Alice was originally intended to be entirely mute, and only being able to communicate with the player using American Sign Language. Concept art of ASL books was also created, as well as a scrapped gameplay sequence where Kara would learn ASL that was intended to also teach players basic ASL signs. The reason for its removal is unknown.
Before the singular story concept of Sonic fighting against Dr. Robotnik, Sonic's character development was very different. During the 2018 Game Developers Conference, game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and character designer Naoto Ohshima revealed that the series almost had connections to World War II.
"Sonic" was originally going to be a fighter pilot who earned the nickname "hedgehog" because of how his hair stood up while flying his plane at high speeds, while the Sonic the Hedgehog design known today was merely a nose decal on the front of his plane. The details of his time in the war were then re-imagined as a children's picture book by the pilot's wife. She took the Sonic the Hedgehog design and based it on her war veteran husband, making the game a story within a story. American pilot Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the speed of sound, was also mentioned in Yasuhara and Ohshima's pitch summary.
Additionally, they showed off line art for a proposed dance sequence during the game, originally intending for Sonic to be a trendy dancer, but this along with the meta-story elements were scrapped during development.
In the third installment of the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers book series released in 2018, Ohshima reiterated that Sonic was going to be a human boy, but SEGA rejected the design, not wanting their mascot to be a human, and Ohshima admitted that he does not have any concept art of Sonic as a human due to his proposal just being a basic outline. Despite this rejection, the core layout of Sonic the Hedgehog's speed-based gameplay and map design was set in stone by this time.
In the game's files, an animatic for a scrapped minigame based on the biblical story of Noah's Ark exists. Two Rabbids are sent to the setting of the book of Genesis, falling into a raincloud that turns dark from their fighting, triggering the flood and then launching each one into two separate arks, with one housing dinosaurs. It is unknown why this minigame was scrapped, but it was likely to avoid controversy due to the sacrilegious nature of the animatic.
The Whomp King, the boss of the Throwback Galaxy, will recite his original speech from his first encounter with Mario at Whomp's Fortress in Super Mario 64. If you lose the fight and then try again, he will start to recite the speech again, and then stop himself declaring he's tired of it. Excluding Bowser and Bowser Jr., the Whomp King is the only standard boss in the game with dialogue. When you deal the final blow to the Whomp King, he makes a unique face that cannot be seen normally because he is lying down when defeated.
The PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii versions contain an interesting "conversation test" left in the data, saying:
Testing Testing ONE Two Three This is a test Hello Spongebob Hello Patrick This is a conversation test I know Ohhhhh I am a little sponge Shut up spongebob gosh its like looking at a mirror shut up shut up shut up dance dance dance boogie boogie boogie I hate my life Hello Spongebob I hate my life
According to character designer Gregg Mayles on Twitter, after the announcement that King K. Rool would be in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a character that Gregg had named and designed the actions of, he revealed that the character was original called "KOMMANDER K. ROOL" and that Donkey Kong Country was originally to be called MONKEY MAYHEM. He also mentioned that the "K." in K. Rool does not actually stand for anything and the name itself is only intended to be a play on the word "cruel", though he joked that the initial could stand for something mundane and off-character, such as "Keith".
In addition, Gregg's brother Steve, who designed the look and visual design for the character, also revealed that the programmers thought King K. Rool was "too big" and too taxing on the game's memory, and thus several frames of the character's animation had to be dropped as a result.
In the Windows PC version, there exists several maps within the game's files that go unused. When loaded in game, none of the area's warps can be used and the player cannot interact with anything. The menu also lists an unused mini game title called "TEIKOI Game". It is unclear what type of game this would have been as when loaded into the game the map is nothing but a blank screen.
The Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast versions of NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC contain secret text in their code that some may find to humorously juxtapose one another.
•The Nintendo 64 version contains the text "An Alan Smithee Game", referring to a pseudonym used by filmmakers to disown a project they don't want to be associated with. •The Dreamcast version contains the text "Joe Rules", likely a signature referring to either programmer Joe Barnes, artist Joe Williamson, or both.
When the Street Fighter skin set was released for Fortnite, a back bling of an arcade machine was released that would show attract mode footage from Street Fighter II. Coinciding with this, a texture was found in the data, under the name "FrenchFry" showing animation from Family Guy in a similar format. While many believed this confirmed that Peter Griffin was planned to be featured in the game alongside a back bling that would show Family Guy clips, it was later stated by a reputable Fortnite leaker named FNBRUnreleased that the Family Guy content could've only been added for one of two reasons: to annoy dataminers, or to internally test the Street Fighter graphics in a humorous way.
The game was originally planned to feature a "Heat Meter" that kept track of how many enemies the player was able to defeat in a row. More consecutive kills would build up the player's "heat," while getting hit and spending too much time without attacking enemies would lose heat. Higher heat levels would additionally make enemies more aggressive, increase the amount of points lost from taking damage, and grant Peppino new attacks. The development team compared this mechanic to a similar one found in God Hand.
This game originally started out as a racing game for the Wallace & Gromit series, called "Wallace & Gromit: The Grand Tour". Unused graphics and codes relating to Wallace & Gromit can still be found within the game's data, such as codes describing the main characters' appearance, as well as pictures of Wallace, Gromit, Preston & Wendolene.
Within the game's data is an image of American pop singer Michael Jackson riding a tricycle. The image, named "test" in the game's files, has a model and animation associated with it, but neither of them are accessible.
If the player installs external NES ROMs onto the Controller Pak and selects the "Save a Letter" option at the Post Office, the game will bring up a unique menu for viewing and deleting the ROMs. Because Nintendo never officially implemented a means of installing NES ROMs onto the Controller Pak, this menu goes unused in normal gameplay. The menu is also absent from Animal Crossing and Dobutsu no Mori e+, due to the player being able to delete the ROMs directly from the GameCube's main menu.
The design of the Anti-Funk, the final boss of the game, originally resembled the hood of a Ku Klux Klan member. This design made it into early review copies of the game before Sega discovered its existence and rejected it, forcing the developers to change it to a skull just before the game's release. In a 2003 Xbox Nation magazine interview with series creator Greg Johnson, he elaborated on the origin of the design:
Before the singular story concept of Sonic fighting against Dr. Robotnik, Sonic's character development was very different. During the 2018 Game Developers Conference, game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and character designer Naoto Ohshima revealed that the series almost had connections to World War II.
The Whomp King, the boss of the Throwback Galaxy, will recite his original speech from his first encounter with Mario at Whomp's Fortress in Super Mario 64. If you lose the fight and then try again, he will start to recite the speech again, and then stop himself declaring he's tired of it. Excluding Bowser and Bowser Jr., the Whomp King is the only standard boss in the game with dialogue. When you deal the final blow to the Whomp King, he makes a unique face that cannot be seen normally because he is lying down when defeated.
