The Cutting Room Floor:Content to expand/Prerelease Pages
Suggestions for prerelease pages to create, with links to information that should be documented.
Contents
General Resources
- Massive archive of scanned gaming magazines - Archive.org
- Another archive of scanned gaming magazines - RetroMags
- [1] - The Arcade Flyer Musuem
To Sort
- EGM Issue 13 (August 1990) has previews of some games that ultimately ended up being unreleased. Notable entries include a version of Block Out that varies from the one dumped. Not sure if the same applies to shown version of War on Wheels.
- With the release of Rare Replay, Rare has been divulging plenty of information about early builds of its various games.
- The Sega Video Magazine tapes (which lasted from 1993-98) have a bunch of prerelease footage from various games.
Arcade
- Daytona USA
- Early screenshots can be found of the game, one of them with a title screen just calling the game Daytona (find the source/magazines with this info). There is also a tech demo.
- X-Men: Children of the Atom
- The Japanese video X-Men: The History includes footage of a version of the game prior to v1.00 (941208).
Multiplatform Games
- Anarchy Reigns
- The game started out as a sequel to Madworld.
- Jack Cayman's model from Madworld was used as a placeholder for some time.
- Bayonetta
- Lots and lots of concept art, featuring various designs for Bayonetta and Jeanne.
- Several videos of prototype footage, all of which can be found here.
- The TGS 2008 trailer, which depicts the crumbling clock tower scene as being in modern times, and Bayonetta having a slightly different model (pure blue eyes instead of blueish-gray, different-looking Umbran Watch, etc.)
- BioShock
- Little Sister, Big Daddy, enemy, Big Sister and Rapture concept art.
- Chicken Little has a trailer and screenshots featuring early HUD graphics and an apparent HUD graphic showing the entire body of the alien walker.Gamershell's website has all we need (except for the trailers).
- Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
- Two prototype videos that feature the debugging tools mentioned in the main article.
- DJ Hero 2
- According to a developer, was going to have a mashup of "Let's Get It Started" and "LoveGame".
- Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist
- The game's trailer contains some gameplay of areas which don't appear/are different in the final game.
- Equilinox
- There is a playlist of Devlogs on YouTube.
- Multiple Fire Emblem games
- Grand Theft Auto III
- The first ever preview of the game, shown on Issue 3 of Official PlayStation 2 magazine, dating back to January 2001.
- E3 2001 coverage.
- Darkel and post-9/11 censorship, including changing the police's color scheme from NYPD to LAPD-inspired and removing planes.
- Beta script page
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
- Guidebook images showing an earlier build of the game.
- Magazine scans originally advertising it as an expansion to Grand Theft Auto III.
- E3 2002 coverage.
- Earlier story draft of a game where you played as an undercover FBI agent.
- Killer7
- There are many noticeable graphical/gameplay differences between the prerelease version and the finished version.
- Prerelease:The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- An old trailer showed a Moblin enemy, which isn't present in the final game. More here.
- Lollipop Chainsaw
- The PAX 2011 build contains numerous differences to the final release. The person hosting the demo even said that the rooms would be randomized, and would change with each subsequent playthrough, but this feature never made it into the final product.
- The Bus Makeover trailer shows the game running in debug mode (with action scripts listed to the left), as well as having very primitive models, textures, and shading. Juliet's model, for one, has humongous eyes and lips, while her model in the final game has realistically-proportioned facial features.
- Mega Man Legacy Collection (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
- Mega Man X4 - Early screen from Sega Saturn World.
- Pokémon GO
- Prerelease information and early screenshots (or mockups?) were shown at GDC 2017.
- Psychonauts
- Various pieces of production artwork that show scrapped rooms.
- Prerelease screenshots from Double Fine's website at the time of the game's release (which can be accessed via archive.org).
- Many more examples here.
- Shadow the Hedgehog
- Self-censorship (G.U.N. soldiers and Black Arms originally bled red blood) and an enemy radar.
- Is this early version of Digital Circuit's music real?
- Snake Pass
- Early trailers and stream archives uploaded to the official Snake Pass Youtube channel highlight a number of differences from the final game.
- Sonic Generations
- Early and/or prototype info here.
- Spyro: A Hero's Tail
- Design documents and assets for the game have been unearthed. See if there are differences.
- Stellaris
- https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/unreleased-stellaris-music-track-by-andreas-waldetoft-listen-here.1051183/#post-23419149 - An early draft of an unused music track, never completed or used due to the tone of the game changing.
- TimeSplitters: Future Perfect
- A pre-release story design document from a former developer at Free Radical Design of TimeSplitters: Future Perfect has been revealed with differences from the final.
- Tomb Raider III
- Video showing prerelease stuff.
- Vexx
- See this wiki page.
Nintendo
- Various things at Nintendo's Space World and E3 sites:
- This service center update has footage of early versions of some Game Boy and SNES games, most notably a "Ver. 0.1A" Super Metroid.
- Nintendo employment leaflets have concept art for newer games, as well a photos of PC monitors with games being developed on.
- MarioWiki category page detailing multiple articles that list things that did not make it into various Mario games. These should be handled very carefully, and proper sources for the images/"facts" should be found beforehand.
- E3 2006 Disc.
- Archive of Nintendo 64 prerelease screenshots and rare cartridge images.
- Nintendo New York has had concept art displays over the years. Photos and videos of these displays are available on the internet. Known displays: Super Mario, Splatoon.
NES
- G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor
- Nintendo Power #29 has screenshots featuring General Hawk with his graphics from the first G.I. Joe NES game.
- Jaws
- The back of the box has screenshots where "the text "SHARK DAMAGE" is displayed above the power indicator instead of "JAWS' POWER." There is also no shell count or player power level shown, just a "man" count." (Source)
- Mega Man series
- Mega Man 3 (1, 2, 3)
- Mega Man 4 (1, 2, 3)
- Early Elec Man and Bomb Man sprites and artwork, scrapped enemies (A, B), Gamma form 1 and 2 concepts, and other images.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street
- According to a 1988 Nintendo Power ad, the player originally controlled Freddy himself.
- On the back of the box, the HUD is shown on the bottom of the screen instead of the top.
- R.C. Pro-Am was originally just called "Pro-Am" and had real cars without antennas as depicted in a magazine screenshot (the source escapes me). It should be noted that the race tracks in the final game have the original title, "Pro-Am", on them.
- Robocco Wars
- Originally called Aruden Raruden and featured a different main character.
- Super Mario Bros.
- Iwata Asks (SMB 25th)
- Development information and concept art.
- Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to have the goal flag to only rise up to the point Mario touched it, a concept that was finally implemented into Super Mario 3D Land.
- The main theme originally had a much slower tempo, because it fit the basic prototype that was made at the time.
Game Boy (Color)
- Animorphs (Images on IGN).
- Double Dragon II
- American Technos was originally going to localize Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun: Bangai Rantouhen as The Renegades.
- Kirby's Dream Land
- Screens from (Twin Famicom based) development tool shown. (Source Gaming)
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle series
- Mega Man V ("Develop" title screen)
- Mega Man Xtreme 1-2 (Beta screens: Xtreme Xtreme 2)
SNES
- Chrono Trigger
- Donkey Kong Country
- Lots of info on Gregg Mayles' Twitter. Also has info for Donkey Kong Country 2 and Banjo-Kazooie.
- EarthBound
- Prerelease screenshots and footage from the initial version of the game (before it was nearly scrapped and HAL stepped in), including an interview with Itoi.
- Star Fox
- Star Fox 2
- Super Castlevania IV
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
- Pictures on the game's main page and subpage.
Nintendo 64
Prerelease Media — While digging through archives I came across a lot of prerelease information and screenshots for N64 games. In this collection, I have saved a large number of screenshots and media files that either show prerelease content, or were from a site showing content from the games prior to their release. Due to the amount of content I was going through, I haven't checked all this content to see if it contained any relevant prerelease content, so there are likely a number of screenshots, that though prerelease, show only content that is present in the final game. The media are sorted by game, with a Links.txt file containing links from which the images from the given game were collected. These links may also prove useful, as many link to pages that contain prerelease information in addition to screenshots. If you use any of these on TCRF, please leave a comment on my talk page so that I can keep track of them.
Game Boy Advance
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
- Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2
- There's some early screenshots which held over the SNES version's HUD, most notably the reserve item box.
GameCube
- Animal Crossing
- Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire
- There was a demo playable / video shown at ECTS in London in August 2003 (game was referred to as "Pokemon Box")
- Soul Calibur II
- There was a demo playable / video shown at ECTS in London in August 2003
Nintendo DS
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
- A June 2006 article from NetLab contains several prerelease screenshots of the game's courtroom (most notably the defense and prosecution screens, though the witness stand was also changed) which showcase a noticeably different design from the one shown later that year at TGS 2006 that was later used in the final game. Additionally, an unaltered sprite of the Judge from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is also shown, where the final game alters it to more closely fit its art style.
- Pokémon Dash
- This game was originally in the form of a Tech Demo for the Nintendo DS, even though the whole Pikachu interaction thing made it to the title screen. Was it originally going to be a follow-up to Hey You, Pikachu!?
https://www.serebii.net/pikachu/
- Scribblenauts
- A July 2009 Nintendo Power article shows a completely different world 7 from the final.
- Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood: Early screenshots, most notably these two stitched together, from IGN's hands-on preview, as well as alternate music for Central City.
Wii
- MadWorld
- Jack Cayman went through many revisions before they settled on his final design.
- A Bloodbath Challenge that involved launching enemies out of a giant slingshot was cut.
- Prototype footage.
- Super Paper Mario
- Originally on GameCube (the main article mentions this).
- Floor demos (the level number correspond to the final level number; see linked pages for details on early level numbers...if they are real):
- Trailers and other videos:
- Good-quality screenshots
- GDC demo description and screenshots
- More: [46], [47], [48] (yes), [49], [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55]
- Interview
3DS
- Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion
- If the Alice in Wonderland world content isn't found in the game's files, document it in a prerelease page.
- Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove
- This blog post has early screenshots of the game.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
- This image from a GDC 2011 trailer shows a bottle poster that was replaced.
- Rhythm Thief & The Emperor's Treasure
- [Archived links] to mock-ups screeshots or screeshots from a beta DS build of the game, which were scrapped in favor of moving production to the then-upcoming Nintendo 3DS hardware.
Wii U
- Bayonetta 2
- The E3 2013 trailer and demo contain noticeable differences from the final product, such as slightly different models (i.e. Bayonetta's earrings contain the Triforce in them, and Jeanne's model looks very unpolished), Bayonetta's hair not coming off her body during Wicked Weaves, and no dialogue.
- The development trailer shows brief clips of the development in progress, as well as the palms of Bayonetta's gloves being purple instead of blue.
- Footage of a prototype build.
- Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
- There is a visible debug display at the top left of the screen in April 8, 2014's Nintendo Direct accompanied by text translating as "HP remaining", presumably for a stage boss. The text appears on the stage Palutena's Temple.
- Footage of the Nintendo Direct.
- The Wonderful 101
- The game was originally going to be a Nintendo crossover title.
- The Project P-100 build has numerous differences from the final release. Also from the period in which the game was Project P-100, the character renders looked slightly different.
- Concept art found in the in-game Gallery shows that the characters went through many different revisions. One of the recurring characters, Luka Alan Smithee, is named "Luka Redgrave" in his concept art. (Luka Redgrave is a recurring character in the Bayonetta series. Both characters wear the same exact scarf, and both carry a camera.)
Nintendo Switch
- Prerelease:Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
- The game was originally going to feature a Rabbid Whomp character
- Sailor Moon style transformations were planned and cut at one point
- The Phantom was originally going to have rap and metal versions of his song for the second and third phases of the fight, but these were cut for not working well.
- Prerelease:Super Mario Odyssey
- Many, many unused ideas are shown in the Art of Super Mario Odyssey book, include Bowser having his own evil version of Cappy, him possessing Peach, Rosalina as a musician, New Donk City with a Mario aesthetic and designs based on Doki Doki Panic to name but a few.
- Prerelease: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Like with the Art of Super Mario Odyssey, the Creating a Champion book contains numerous sketches of unused ideas, including Divine Beasts, older Guardian designs, older town designs, Hyrule as it was 100 years ago and a Lynel esque design for Horse God Malayna. This book will need looking through in its entirety at some point.
- At one point, the game had aliens and a futuristic theme to it, which was shown in a 2017 GDC presentation..
- The Minish were considered for this game, but scrapped because having them and the shrinking mechanic in the large open world were technically difficult to implement.
- Someone claiming to work for Nintendo gave some info on Nintendo's future plans for Switch Online/information about Super Mario 3D All-Stars and the Switch release of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light. If it turns out to be accurate, this can be used on prerelease pages for those titles.
Sega
Master System
- Pit Fighter
- [56] The game shows a different HUD (that is mostly cropped off in the screenshots) and different placements for the character names. Southside Jim is known as Southsid, Chainman Eddie is known as Ainman Edd and able to choose the characters to play as rather than the 3 default characters.
Genesis
- John Madden Football '93
- [57] Early matchup screen with different EASN logo.
- Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
- Plenty of early coverage.
- Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel
- The box has a screenshot where Zero's head on the HUD shows him smiling like a lunatic. This icon never appears in the final game.
Game Gear
- Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble: Magazine screenshots show Nack the Weasel with a gun.
Sony
PlayStation
- Gran Turismo 2
- There is a screenshot of the CLK-GTR and Special Stage Route 11, both cut from the final game. Curiously, the CLK-GTR has a Warsteiner logo in the windshield.
- A footage of the R34 Skyline GT-R in Special Stage Route 11 slipped into the Gran Turismo 20th Anniversary video (3:10)
- This sticker set has a picture of a road-going model of the CLK-GTR. (It's on Yahoo Japan Auctions. Buy and scan it!)
- There is a screenshot of the CLK-GTR and Special Stage Route 11, both cut from the final game. Curiously, the CLK-GTR has a Warsteiner logo in the windshield.
- Rally Cross 2: A car resembling the Volkswagen New Beetle (1, 2) was removed from the final. Possibly Baja before it became a Wrangler in the final game?
- WipEout: Early screenshots appeared in magazines with a different HUD (find them) and an early version, possibly tech demo of the game featured in the movie Hackers.
PlayStation 2
- Gran Turismo 4
- Some early screenshots feature the Lancer Evo VII WRC from GT Concept, which was cut and ultimately replaced with the Super Rally Car (loosely based on Mitsubishi's 2004 WRC car, but with the 1997 livery). The Evo VII WRC might be in the GT4P-based demos.
- WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It
- Screenshots exist of Ivory wearing her Right to Censor outfit.
- Early gameplay footage
PlayStation 4
- Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online
- Gran Turismo Sport
- A presentation document shows a Volkswagen GTI Supersport Vision GT Gr.B Rally Car, while Copper Box presentation build has the Mazda Roadster N200 - a similar looking version of Roadster was originally meant as Mazda's Gr.4 car before being replaced with Atenza (Mazda6).
PlayStation Portable
- Danganronpa: Kibou no Gakuen to Zetsubou no Koukousei
- Early concept and execution
- Trailer differences
- Early concept ideas and screenshots (Forum)
- More screenshots and possible development information (Japanese Article)
- Concept art (Blog)
- Notes on the early concept (Blog)
- Screenshots of both the early concept and prerelease ideas (Blog)
- A few more screenshots of the early concept and concept art (Blog)
- Prerelease info and screenshots (Archive)
Microsoft
DOS
- Hoyle's Official Book of Games has different character graphics in the pictures on the back of the box.
- Rise of the Triad
- The game was originally another expansion pack for Wolfenstein 3D like Spear of Destiny, but was axed due to the impending release of Doom. A good number of elements from this early version exist in the final game. Also mention the Doom Bible's small influence on RotT (multiple playable characters with small gameplay differences, names like Thi Barrett and Taradin(a/o) Cassatt)
- This video shows the female Low Guard and alternate High Guard in action at 0:11, and this one is the video capturing sessions of the alternate Lightning Guard, Low Guard, and Strike Team.
- Manual things - the female Low Guard can be seen in the Wanderwalls screenshot on p. 12, as well as in the enemy list. The female Strike Team is mentioned in the list as well, and was planned to appear in the Deluxe edition.
- System Shock
Xbox 360
Windows
- Alan Wake
- The game had a rather rather lengthy development, with footage dating all the way back to 2005!
- Astrobatics
- There are initial screenshots that can be accessed via The Wayback Machine, from when the game was in its early stages. They can be seen here.
- Bejeweled Deluxe
- Command and Conquer: Generals
- There's two prerelease videos, if this thread is to be believed. Hopefully, they're still on the Internet somewhere.
- Duke Nukem Forever
- Way too much to list here, considering how long it spent in development hell. This could be a good starting point.
- Fallout 2
- LEGO Island
- The July-August 1996 issue of the LEGO Mania magazine features early box art from back when the game was called Adventures on LEGO Island.
- This page has some early screenshots of LEGO Racers and LEGO Racers 2.
- It also mentions several issues of the LEGO Mania magazine that have early screenshots of LEGO Racers, LEGO Racers 2, and LEGO Rock Raiders. They can be found here.
- Minecraft
- The game's developers have posted a lot of photos and information from early versions of the game on their Twitter and Instagram accounts that differ from the final game.
- Outpost
- Apparently this game was criticized because the developers promised features that didn't actually make it into the final game. Some of these were even mentioned in the game manual. In addition, the PC Gamer review was based on a prerelease version of the game.
- Portal Stories: Mel
- The developers uploaded a playthrough of a 2013 build of the game.
- An early version of Past Power on Steam Workshop.
- Aperture Leisure scrapped area.
- Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo
- There's a few prototype screenshots from the old Humongous website, and a really early one in a Humongous catalog that came with a few games around 1995.
- SimCity 3000
- Article which describes the game was originally going to use a 3D engine.
- Small article describing early designs for buildings that appear in the in-game screenshots.
- The Sims 4
- Development for that game started way back in 2008, when The Sims 3 was nearing completion. It was originally going to be an online game, under the working title known as "Sims Olympus" which could be found on various portfolio sites. It was scrapped, because of the poor performance issues. Here's a blog describing the development.
Misc.
LaserActive
- Tons of prerelease videos/images at LaserActive Preservation Project (+ @MaxKriegerVG)
WonderSwan Color
- Namco Super Wars (Official site screens are different from final. Also video: early version, (apparently) final version)