“What if?” That's a question we ask ourselves a lot in our lives. It could pertain to real life questions. What if I asked her 🙈out? What if I got on the roa😼d just a minute earlier? You could go crazy thinking of scenarios like this. A less dire example can pertain to media. In today's case, we're going to be looking at cut content, or scrapped ideas in some of the best, most iconic video games of the 90s. That's when my heyday as a gamer was. I'm not saying everything has been downhill ever since, but I have a lot of nostalgia during this period. I'm, sigh, a 90s kid. Go ahead and laugh.
Anyway, ✃I love to write about retro games. Discovering new games I never got to play, or even knew about is a wondrous treat even if those games turn out to be bad. The next best thing is expanding my knowledge with facts. These twenty-five entries go beyond mere trivia notes. Maybe you've heard some of these and maybe you haven't. My guess is a lot of these are going to be new to you unless you're an avid subscriber to on YouTube too. Whether that's true, or not companies try to desperately hide a lot of stuff from the media surrounding a game's launch. Discussing cut content around that period may be detrimental. They also might be worried about others stealing their ideas. Thankfully lips get loosened as time goes on. However, these got revealed, or leaked doesn't matter. It's time to learn!
24 Final Fantasy VII Detective Agency
Last year, put out this amazing oral history on one of my favorite games of all time: Final Fantasy VII. Get th𓃲is. Cloud wasn’t going to be the protagonist. Actually, the entire game was going to be quite different. It was originally imagined to💎 take place in New York City and be about a detective agency. A detective RPG for Final Fantasy? That sounds pretty awesome to me. That said, I'm glad we got what we got instead.
23 Super Mario 64 Co-Op
Hold on to your wing shaped hats Mario fans because this is going to blow your mind. Super Mario 64 was planned to have a co-op split-screen option with, you guessed i☂t🧸, Luigi.
Luigi always gets left behind.
While this didn’t make it in, an Easter egg is still in the game's code, whether intentional, or not. If a second controller gets plugged in that player can control the camera. That's not exac🐷tly split-screen, but it gives more c🧸lout to this idea.
22 Cruel Mega Man Legends
There is a scrapped concept for a malicious mega man character that was going to be an antagonist of not only Mega Man but also the Bonne pirate family. It was cut due to time c🔯onstraints and a small budget since Mega Man’s popularity, at the time, was declining. Mega Man was al✨so going to have a human rival named Artillery that would even have shown interest in Roll and would have competed for her affection. Unlike the evil Mega Man, Artillery is still in the game as a very minor character and hangs out in the Digger shop.
21 Pokémon MissingNo. Mystery Solved
The original Pokémon games have a wealth of knowledge written about them and their cut content. For example, 190 Pokémon were planned for Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green in Japan. There's an easy way to test this out. If you look at the values corresponding to each Pokémon programmed into the game, the last one creat♚ed was Victreebel at 190. The glitch of MissingNo. exists due to a rushed purging of the code. That is to say, MissingNo. takes up space of﷽ Pokémon that should be in the code.
20 A Link To The Past’s Lost Heroes
This game, my favorite in the series, almost got multiple party members similar to Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games at the time. Shigeru Miyamoto’s ideas revolv▨ed around a fighter similar to Link, a magic user, and a girl.
The missing Triforce trio of heroes.
It’s weird that he says just “a girl” considering that’s not a class, or description. Can you imagine playing Dungeons and Dragons and asking to play the "g🍃irl," and your DM looking at you like you're crazy?
19 Sonic The Hedgehog’s Replacement
Sonic was almost not even the star of his own game. When Sega was trying to come up with an idea for a mascot platformer, that doodle above came up. Yes, that's Dr. Eggman only he wasn't called that at the time. Another fun fact about Dr. Eggman, if it wasn't obvious, is that he's modeled after Teddy Roosevelt. The most obvious homage to him is that big bushy mustache. I have one more fact. According to the game's lore💮, the musꦇtache is fake!
18 Resident Evil 2’s Prototype Concept
Resident Evil 2 w꧅as going to be vastly different, with these early builds now dubbed as 1.5 online. The biggest difference is Claire was not in it. Her role was given to a college student by the name of Elza Walker.
I hope Elza is in the remake somehow.
Capcom dropped Elza for Claire in order to give the first and second game a bigger connection. That is to say, they made h🍰er Chris' sꩵister. Also of note, Elza and Leon would never have crossed paths in their separate campaigns.
17 ๊ Metal Gear Déja Vu 🍬
The concept for Metal Gear Solid was going to be just a remake of the second game, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which was never released ou🐼tside of Japan for the obscure MSX2 computer. This was a chance to introduce an English audience to the game. Howev✱er, it was revamped to be a new game although you can find a lot of similarities still in the game. For example, the base layout, the villain roster, and Cyber Ninja are all very familiar. If you played both you'd understand.
16 Crash Bandicoot Cut Levels
Three levels remain in the first game’s code. These are based o▨n two rocky levels, one with a waterfall to make it more distinct, and a cave with an acid aesthetic. Even though enemies are absent along with some hit detection, all three look like they’re nearly comp﷽lete. They were presumably cut due to time constraints, as is usually the case. A fourth is actually complete called Stormy Decent. It was only removed because playtesting said it was too hard and Naughty Dog didn't have time to adjust the challenge. It’s now in the PS4 remake though.
15 ✱ Golde🅰nEye SNES
The acclaimed GoldenEye movie tie-in for the Nintendo 64 went through several changes that could fill a book. For one, it began as a 2D side-scroller on the Super Nintendo similar to Donkey Kong Country, which Rare had also developed for Nintendo.
I'm still waiting for James Bond Country.
After that idea was scrapped, devel🍌opment moved onto creating an on-rails type shooter, or light gun game, reminiscent of Virtua Cop. Rare took all of these ideas to heart and eventually landed on the first-person shooter concept.