In 2012, an HD compilation of the first two Yakuza games was ported to the Wii U. This port of the games performed so poorly that it sold less than 2000 copies in its first week of release, likely due to the fact that both games were already ported to the PlayStation 3 where more players already owned it. However, series producer Toshihiro Nagoshi stated that this port of the game was not done to generate sales, but as an "experiment" to see how people would respond to the games being on the Wii U.
The platform fighter genre has typically been thought of as having originated with the Super Smash Bros. franchise, to the point where it is common for the genre to be called "Smash Clones". However, while Smash did introduce almost all of the defining mechanics to the subgenre, such as ring-out based KOs, wavedashing, and the 3/4-way-input special move system, there are at least two titles that predate Nintendo's crossover and attempted to merge platforming with fighting gameplay - the multiplayer mode within 1991's Captain America and the Avengers for NES, and 1995's arcade title The Outfoxies. Both titles had characters with limited movepools compared to the style Smash would popularise and were lifebar-based. The Outfoxies also included damaging stage hazards and items, two mechanics popular within Smash but scantly used in other platform fighters.
Also of mention is Savage Reign, a traditional fighting game from 1995 featuring a platform gimmick, though this game has far less in common with platform fighters than The Outfoxies or Captain America, simply serving as a traditional fighting game with two planes to stand on as opposed to mobility-based platforming.
It is not known if anyone who worked on Super Smash Bros. was aware of or conciously took inspiration from these 3 games.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury has unused character select screen voice clips from Toadette ripped from Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, suggesting she was going to be a playable character at some point.
The Atari 2600 version of Klax - also the final official release of the Atari 2600's lifespan, releasing in 1990 - was planned for release in the US, as proven by the existence of at least 9 NTSC prototypes using the final ROM, but only came out in PAL regions, likely due to the 2600's waning popularity going into the 1990s.
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
In the E3 1997 demo reel for LEGO Island, an early version of the bad ending is shown, which is significantly longer than the final game's ending scene, showing situations such as a motorcycle breaking down, minifigures losing their heads, an ambulance falling into a river, a minifigure getting their leg bitten by a shark, a homeless minifigure begging for change, and the Information Center experiencing a fire. The final game significantly shortens this to just the Brickster contemplating what he's done in front of the town debris, likely as the original ending was deemed too depressing for small children.
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.
Cheap Cheap the Cooking Chicken has unused front-facing sprites. It is not known what these are for, but it's been speculated that she was going to use them inside the TV and then switch to her used in-profile sprite when PaRappa gets a Bad rating and she comes out of the TV to scold him.
Flappy Bird was removed from app stores by creator Dong Nguyen on February 8th 2014, due to being overwhelmed by its success and feeling guilt over the addictive, frustrating nature of the game, which he had originally intended to be relaxing. Although many speculated that the game was taken down by Nintendo due to the game's pipes and their similarity to the pipes from the Mario series, both Nguyen and Nintendo denied this.
Nguyen claimed that his worries about the game had lost him sleep, and removing the game from sale managed to restore piece of mind - despite this, Nguyen did promise a Flappy Bird comeback, albeit in a less addictive form, which would eventually come in the form of an official sequel: Flappy Birds Family for Amazon Fire TV.
Some eBay users attempted to sell the iPhones with the original game installed for up to $99,900, but the listings were removed due to eBay's rules against selling technology that has not been factory reset.
Early titles for Flicky include Flippy and Busty, both names were changed due to copyright issues, along with Flippy sounding too close to one of Flicky's inspirations, Mappy, and "busty" being a lewd American slang term. The name Flippy got so far in usage that promotional flyers exist with the title.
Masanao Arimoto, who took over Takaya Imamura's role as the character and sprite artist for Star Fox 2 from the first game, seemed to have cycled through a wide variety of new character pilots designs to represent the two Light class Arwing models, before finally settling on Fay (a spaniel) and Miyu (a Lynx). These beta designs were discovered in the Nintendo Gigaleak of 2020.
Some of these include a sheep, a bear, a deer, a hippo, and even Fara Phoenix (dubbed internally as "lady") from the 1993 Star Fox Nintendo Power comics. The sheep design would actually appear in an issue of Super Game Power magazine that had a feature on Star Fox 2 (before it was cancelled) along with Miyu, making it clear that it was an early design for what would become Fay.
What's also notable and curious is that there seem to be unused female human pilots found within the Gigaleak. It is speculated that Arimoto drew these up as generic templates to base the new female characters' designs off of, rather than introduce human characters into the Star Fox series specifically like what has been theorized since the Gigaleak. The fact that there are multiple different variants of the same non-descript woman with none of them being a different gender compared to the vastly more distinctive anthro designs that Arimoto brainstormed adds credence to this theory.
The credits for Spot Goes to Hollywood call the game Cool Spot 3, but it is unknown what game is supposed to be Cool Spot 2. It could either be counting Spot: The Cool Adventure (which was released in Europe as McDonaldland, despite the credits for Hollywood not changing in that region) as Cool Spot 2, or it could be counting the original Cool Spot as Cool Spot 2 while treating the Reversi game Spot: The Video Game as Cool Spot 1.
The Madden curse was an urban legend which claimed that athletes who appeared on the box of Madden games would either under-perform or sustain an injury in the season following their game's release. After a 16-year streak of "bad luck" starting from Garrison Hearst's appearance on the box of Madden NFL 99 in 1998, the first Madden game to feature a cover athlete and not John Madden himself, the "curse" would finally be broken in 2014, when Calvin Johnson managed to have one of the best seasons in his career following his appearance on the box of Madden NFL 15. Although the streak ended, the curse would strike sporadically over the continuning years, but so far has not begun another continuing streak of bad luck.
In 2010, a film adaptation of the Madden curse was announced by EA, but no news has surfaced on it since and it can be assumed cancelled.
In 2023, a set of extremely early Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl screenshots were shared through Discord by a developer, showing an aesthetic closer to Slap City and early versions of SpongeBob, Oblina, Leonardo, The Dump, Jellyfish Fields, and - most notably - Rooftop Rumble, based on Shredder's lair from the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show instead of the 80s TMNT (despite the 80s turtles having already been decided on this point). Also among the images was Hardcore Chores, Rocko's DLC stage, suggesting that a Rocko's Modern Life character may have been intended for base game.
The Commodore 64 version of Psycho Soldier may be one of the earliest instances of a video game character having their race swapped, where Athena is depicted as black on the loading screen and box art, while also being depicted as having a red/pink caucasian skin color in-game.
In the lead-up to the release of Super Villain Island, a piece of concept art titled "Combo Breaker" was posted on the Daily Pop, depicting what appears to be a robot that combined elements from the four villains featured in the island's story (rabbit traits from Dr. Hare, jester traits from Mordred/Binary Bard, artist traits from Black Widow, and pirate traits from Captain Crawfish), as well as what appears to be traits reminiscent of a cowboy. This, combined with an earlier Daily Pop post titled "Perchance to Dream" that suggested the Dream Machine was originally going to have five containment units instead of four, has lead some fans to believe that El Mustachio Grande (the main antagonist of Wild West Island) was originally going to appear alongside the former four as one of the main villains. While this has never been confirmed, it's worth noting that El Mustachio Grande appeared as one of the answers to the Pop Quiz question "Who is your favorite Poptropica villain?" alongside the four. Additionally, while he does not play a role in the story of Super Villain Island, he does still make a cameo during the elevator sequence alongside various other Poptropica villains.
In 2013, around the launch of Disney Infinity, Disney merchandise artist Jim Valeri posted a set of images to his portfolio of angular figures, resembling the character models from Disney Infinity, of Muppets Kermit, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, Animal, Beaker, and Fozzie Bear, mentioning that they were made a year ago and he had no clue what they were for or if they would be released. While not explicitly stated, it seems heavily likely from the timing and aesthetic that these were intended as characters for Disney Infinity who never saw the light of day, possibly due to the financial failure of the 2014 film Muppets Most Wanted.
When Contact released its first teaser materials in Japan, some EarthBound fans believed the teasers to be for Mother 3, due to the presence of a doctor who strongly resembles Dr. Andonuts from EarthBound, drawn in a similar artstyle.
Despite being marketed as one of the two-games-in-one packs that were popular on the Game Boy Advance, neither game included in Looney Tunes Double Pack was ever released separately. The game's copyright information before the title screen lists both of the included games as separate copyrighted entities, meaning they may have been intended to be released as separate, more expansive titles at some point.
Unusually, the 3DS version of Donkey Kong: Original Edition was originally released with an unfinished ROM predating the hack's previous Wii release. The only change in the unfinished version was that the copyright assigned the game as a 2008 release instead of 2010, suggesting that it was originally intended to be released for the 25th anniversary of Donkey Kong's Famicom port and delayed for Super Mario Bros.' anniversary. The game would soon be patched the use the Wii ROM instead.
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.
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.
Cheap Cheap the Cooking Chicken has unused front-facing sprites. It is not known what these are for, but it's been speculated that she was going to use them inside the TV and then switch to her used in-profile sprite when PaRappa gets a Bad rating and she comes out of the TV to scold him.
Early titles for Flicky include Flippy and Busty, both names were changed due to copyright issues, along with Flippy sounding too close to one of Flicky's inspirations, Mappy, and "busty" being a lewd American slang term. The name Flippy got so far in usage that promotional flyers exist with the title.
Masanao Arimoto, who took over Takaya Imamura's role as the character and sprite artist for Star Fox 2 from the first game, seemed to have cycled through a wide variety of new character pilots designs to represent the two Light class Arwing models, before finally settling on Fay (a spaniel) and Miyu (a Lynx). These beta designs were discovered in the Nintendo Gigaleak of 2020.
In 2023, a set of extremely early Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl screenshots were shared through Discord by a developer, showing an aesthetic closer to Slap City and early versions of SpongeBob, Oblina, Leonardo, The Dump, Jellyfish Fields, and - most notably - Rooftop Rumble, based on Shredder's lair from the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show instead of the 80s TMNT (despite the 80s turtles having already been decided on this point). Also among the images was Hardcore Chores, Rocko's DLC stage, suggesting that a Rocko's Modern Life character may have been intended for base game.
The Commodore 64 version of Psycho Soldier may be one of the earliest instances of a video game character having their race swapped, where Athena is depicted as black on the loading screen and box art, while also being depicted as having a red/pink caucasian skin color in-game.
In the lead-up to the release of Super Villain Island, a piece of concept art titled "Combo Breaker" was posted on the Daily Pop, depicting what appears to be a robot that combined elements from the four villains featured in the island's story (rabbit traits from Dr. Hare, jester traits from Mordred/Binary Bard, artist traits from Black Widow, and pirate traits from Captain Crawfish), as well as what appears to be traits reminiscent of a cowboy. This, combined with an earlier Daily Pop post titled "Perchance to Dream" that suggested the Dream Machine was originally going to have five containment units instead of four, has lead some fans to believe that El Mustachio Grande (the main antagonist of Wild West Island) was originally going to appear alongside the former four as one of the main villains. While this has never been confirmed, it's worth noting that El Mustachio Grande appeared as one of the answers to the Pop Quiz question "Who is your favorite Poptropica villain?" alongside the four. Additionally, while he does not play a role in the story of Super Villain Island, he does still make a cameo during the elevator sequence alongside various other Poptropica villains.
In 2013, around the launch of Disney Infinity, Disney merchandise artist Jim Valeri posted a set of images to his portfolio of angular figures, resembling the character models from Disney Infinity, of Muppets Kermit, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, Animal, Beaker, and Fozzie Bear, mentioning that they were made a year ago and he had no clue what they were for or if they would be released. While not explicitly stated, it seems heavily likely from the timing and aesthetic that these were intended as characters for Disney Infinity who never saw the light of day, possibly due to the financial failure of the 2014 film Muppets Most Wanted.
Unusually, the 3DS version of Donkey Kong: Original Edition was originally released with an unfinished ROM predating the hack's previous Wii release. The only change in the unfinished version was that the copyright assigned the game as a 2008 release instead of 2010, suggesting that it was originally intended to be released for the 25th anniversary of Donkey Kong's Famicom port and delayed for Super Mario Bros.' anniversary. The game would soon be patched the use the Wii ROM instead.