The Cutting Room Floor
The Cutting Room Floor is a site dedicated to unearthing and researching unused and cut content from video games. From debug menus, to unused music, graphics, enemies, or levels, many games have content never meant to be seen by anybody but the developers — or even meant for everybody, but cut due to time/budget constraints.
Feel free to browse our collection of games and start reading. Up for research? Try looking at some stubs and see if you can help us out. Just have some faint memory of some unused menu/level you saw years ago but can't remember how to access it? Feel free to start a page with what you saw and we'll take a look. If you want to help keep this site running and help further research into games, feel free to donate.
Featured Article
Developer: KnowWonder (Windows), Westlake Interactive (Macintosh)
Publisher: EA Games (Windows), Aspyr Media (Macintosh)
Released: 2001, Windows, Mac OS Classic, Mac OS X
The PC version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone went through an accelerated development cycle in order to be released alongside the film of the same name. The game was mostly based on the original book by J.K. Rowling as Warner Bros. was extremely strict about releasing materials related to the highly anticipated film adaptation. The movie went on to become the top-grossing film of 2001, and the PC version similarly became one of the best-selling games of the year and continues to have a following of its own.
While the magical world of Hogwarts has many secrets to be found, the game's files are full of perhaps even more secrets that reveal much about what was going on behind the scenes. Remnants from the game's rushed development include an easily accessible debug mode, various assets for a scrapped Privet Drive level, tons of unused dialogue, and a plethora of other content intended for numerous features that were ultimately dropped.
All Featured BlurbsDid You Know...
- ...that several unused bosses exist in Cuphead's data?
- ...that the Game Boy version of Yoshi's Cookie was once called Hermetica?
- ...that the arcade version of Bubble Bobble has a complete set of slot machine graphics?
- ...that many early Konami NES games have anti-piracy features designed to make the player's experience miserable?
- ...that the arcade game of The Simpsons was made much easier (and given an actual scoring system) for the Japanese market?
- ...that Princess Peach and Bowser are shown getting drunk on champagne in the Japanese version of Super Mario Kart?
- ...that at least 51 games released on today's date have articles?
Contributing
Want to contribute? Not sure where to begin? Visit the Help page for everything you need to get started, including...
- Instructions for creating and editing articles
- Guides that will help you find debug modes, unused graphics, hidden levels, and more
- A list of what needs to be done
- Common things that can be found in hundreds of different games
We also have a sizable list of games that either don't have pages yet, or whose pages are in serious need of expansion. Check it out!
Featured File
Sonic X-treme was intended to be the first 3D Sonic title, developed from concepts stretching back to the 32X era, but ran into a myriad of development problems and eventually scrapped, with a Sega Saturn port of Sonic 3D Blast being released instead. The cancellation of X-treme is widely considered a large reason for the Saturn's commercial failure outside Japan (Sonic wasn't as popular in his home country at the time, so the lack of a 3D Sonic game wasn't a big concern there).
A disc containing an early Saturn tech demo was discovered in 2005 and released to the public on July 17, 2007. In 2014, ASSEMblergames user Jollyroger found a set of data discs that belonged to the Point of View studio, which included early PC builds of Sonic X-treme, level editors, and an unseen prototype made by Point of View dated July 14, 1996. View more...
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