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: Active Enterprises
Publisher: Active Enterprises
Released: 1991, Unlicensed NES
Action 52 is easily one of the most infamous unlicensed titles for the NES. From the rushed 3 month development with inexperienced college students programming the game to the (then) laughable $199 price tag for 52 buggy games, it has been widely mocked since its release. It's also become a gateway into unlicensed video games, partially due to how legendarily bad the game has become.
This legendary badness has resulted in people hacking the game open to see what's been hiding inside. Given the lack of development time and the large cartridge space, quite a fair amount has been found inside of the game. This includes small little graphics here and there like (The) French Baker's title screen, unused levels like those for Billy Bob, and partially implemented ideas like Bubble Gum Rosy driving.
All Featured BlurbsDid You Know...
- ...that the original Xbox had an easter egg that went hidden for almost 20 years before a developer revealed it?
- ...that multiple NES games have worse audio than intended, due to hardware reading the data backwards?
- ...that the Atari version of Donkey Kong had an easter egg that took 26 years to discover?
- ...that Persona 5 Royal has over two hours worth of unused cutscenes?
- ...that Monster Rancher has a slick techno track randomly put on the CD as filler?
- ...that the Wii version of A Boy and His Blob has a Sam & Max: Freelance Police intro movie?
- ...that at least 66 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
The complete development files for Alien Breed 3D II were officially released on the cover disc of issue 95 of Amiga Format magazine, in February 1997. While supposedly a release of the source code for that game, in fact the original game's code and assets are also in there (as the sequel was clearly built on top of it), and if anything, there are actually more unused files from the original Alien Breed 3D than the follow-up game included. This includes various old code and builds from demos, as well as lots of graphics for unused enemies. It also includes the original game's cut theme music. Alien Breed 3D (and its sequel) was mostly the work of one man - programmer Andy Clitheroe. As such the development files comprise of a dump of a directory from his hard drive.
Pictured here is an early title screen. The red alien pictured actually exists as an enemy in the development files. Parts of this image are visible in the review of the game in the September 1995 issue of CU Amiga magazine, which is clearly an unfinished build as it includes early weapon graphics. It suggests that this image was the title screen for the game until late in development.
Archive
