In an early demo build of the game from E3 2014, Luigi was able to perform a wall-jump (possibly as a leftover from Mario's moveset), but for unknown reasons, this was removed in the final version of the game.
Ben Hurst, one of the writers for the 1993 "Sonic the Hedgehog" animated series, attempted to pitch a continuation of the show to Sega in 2002 as either a third season or a movie. He consulted DiC Entertainment, who produced the show (as well as two other Sonic cartoons, "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" and "Sonic Underground"), and was given the name of a Sega executive who wanted to talk with him more about the idea. Hurst then received a call from Ken Penders, at the time the head writer for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, who had been made aware of Hurst's interest in making a movie based on the series. Hurst offered to include Penders in the project, and told him his strategy for the pitch was to develop a satisfying storyline to conclude the show, and simultaneously giving Sega ideas for new games. This resulted in a long-standing controversy where Hurst claimed that Penders sabotaged his plan by telling Sega that he was trying to co-opt the franchise, resulting in Hurst's dismissal from the project. Over 13 years after Hurst's death, Penders would give his side of the story in a 2023 blog post, claiming that Hurst's joint proposal between the two would involve asking Sega to pay them to produce the series, and doubted that Sega would even schedule a meeting to let them pitch it if Sega funding the pitch was the premise, stating that "the owner of any IP is looking for a payday when it comes to using the rights for their properties."
In September 2003, Penders pitched his own concept for a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, titled "Sonic Armageddon". Four pieces of concept art were produced, and even a homemade pitch video was made to show to Sega executives. From what is known about the pitch (which seemed to borrow elements from both the 1993 series and the Archie comics), it would have involved the planet Mobius being destroyed and changed the depiction of the roboticization procedure to something much more gruesome than what had been previously seen. Notably, several major characters (such as the Freedom Fighters sans Sonic, Tails and Sally) are not shown in either the pitch video or the concept art, and the characters that are shown are given major redesigns. A common belief is that DreamWorks Animation was Penders' choice to produce the film, but Penders would later state in 2019 that he had pitched the idea to Sega only, and that DreamWorks had no involvement. The film never materialized; Penders would later claim on separate occasions that the idea was dropped because of "massive corporate upheaval", as well as the development of the animated series "Sonic X" affecting talks regarding the film.
Anton was originally supposed to be an alcoholic in Antonball Deluxe, but the publisher forced the developers to remove that element, and he would drink sodas and floats instead. Anton would be made a drunkard in Antonblast, and the plot of the new game would revolve around rescuing his collection of "spirits".
Anton was originally created as series creator Tony Grayson's profile picture for a forum when he was 9 years old in 2007, under the name "Red Guy". Because the first Antonball was black and white, Red Guy was renamed to Anton. One of the Anton variant characters in Antonball Deluxe is named after Red Guy.
According to Fruit Ninja creator Luke Muscat in a comment on a YouTube video comparing the 1993 and 2023 Super Mario Bros. movies, there was a massive push following Fruit Ninja's success to have it be adapted for TV or cinema, something he attributed to other members of the studio feeling that the other 2 mediums were more "legitimate" in the face of an era where games were not taken as seriously. All of the characters and stories added to Fruit Ninja were made for the purpose of facilitating these unmade adaptations, something Muscat described as "divisive" and compared to having to try and adapt a film that does not exist into a game rather than the other way around.
Comment archived in case it gets deleted (YouTube link contains a comment hyperlink tag): "Great video Patrick and team. I was the designer / creator of Fruit Ninja, which obviously had absolutely ZERO story or character development. After the huge success of the game, (and as I was leaving the project), a push started to get film and TV adaptions made. For some at the studio, getting an adaptation made the whole thing more legitimate, like the property had "made it". Games were still struggling to be taken seriously despite being such a huge global business, but film and TV didn't have that problem. But given how narratively thin the source material was, new characters and story started getting added into the game specifically to support those future jumps to film and TV (and merch I guess). This was very... divisive. It was like having to adapt a film into an existing game... except the film didn't exist yet. It was a time."
During a Q&A with Kotaku in 2015, it was noted that both Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair had a female character that appeared to have been designed to be the player/main character's favorite, the former game having Kyoko Kirigiri and the latter game having Chiaki Nanami. When asked if this was intentional, series creator Kazutaka Kodaka stated:
"For number one, I didn't really specifically think of any female characters as the heroine. In regards to Kyoko Kirigiri specifically, it was just the idea that she was a detective and she had a good thought process that drove her to be perceived in that role for the player. On the other hand, wanting to specifically create a heroine is what drove Chiaki's creation."
Wuhu Island was originally created for Wii Sports before its debut appearance in Wii Fit. An early version of the island can be seen in a leaked development image for Wii Sports, and in footage of the unused Airplane sport in the E3 2006 demo for the game. The leaked image also indicates that the Airplane sport would have also given you the option to fly around the island with a Rocket Belt, an idea that would later be reused in Pilotwings Resort.
Baldur's Gate 3 was originally revealed with a CGI trailer at a conference for the Google Stadia cloud gaming service in June 2019 as part of an Early Access exclusivity deal that would ultimately be cancelled when Stadia was shut down in 2023. The game's director Swen Vincke touted the service at the time for its purported accessibility, and the potential for in-game community feedback to directly affect the game's development and playthroughs via Stadia's Crowd Choice feature. However, Vincke later expressed regret over having the game be revealed this way, calling it "a really stupid deal" due to the challenges of releasing an Early Access build to a second platform, but that "it allowed me to pay for the CGI."
The uDraw was conceived after THQ employees noticed how difficult drawing was with the Wii Remote in the Wii version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, and was originally called the Drawn to Life Pal. Multiple pitches for other licensed Drawn to Life titles in the same vein as Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition were made, with Marvel Comics, Pixar, Star Wars, and Conan the Barbarian being pitched as examples. However, no Drawn to Life game with uDraw compatibility would ever release, though one uDraw launch title, Dood's Big Adventure, bears a fair resemblance to the series. No reason has been given for the series' absence or why a new IP was made with Dood's Big Adventure instead of using the brand recognition of Drawn to Life, but it may be connected to the controversial ending of the DS version of The Next Chapter and its finality for the core Drawn to Life Raposa universe.
Normally, when the player decides to build a public works project, Isabelle will prevent the player from going to the beach while scouting out a potential site due to the instability of the sand there. However, if the player uses cheats or glitches to bring Isabelle to the beach and then talks to her, she will give them the option to state whether or not they want to start construction. Despite this, she will deny the request anyway if the player answers yes; however, she will not cite the quality of the ground, but rather will state that there is no available space. Depending on where they are standing, she will state that the proposed site is either too close to the ocean or too close to the cliff, statements which do not otherwise come up in normal gameplay. This dialogue implies that building public works projects on the beach was considered at one point in development.
Within the game's data are sprites for Glad and Calm Goombas; the final game only features regular, Mad, and Sad varieties. Of note is that the Calm Goombas' sprites depict them with a pastel green palette, whereas the final game only differentiates Calm enemies from regular ones by having them stay asleep until provoked. Both unused Goomba types also feature a considerably different art style compared to the final game, indicating that the removal of color coordination for the Calm vibe occurred at around the same time as the overhaul in the game's aesthetics.
In an interview with the developers at Blue Tongue, they mentioned several buildings they wanted to include in this game, but had to drop due to design decisions or memory constraints on home consoles:
•Hotels, which would provide extra accommodation for guests. •Dino-Vet Station, which would have been vital for keeping dinosaurs healthy. •Hunting Platforms, which would let visitors hunt down carnivores in the park from afar.
The Dino-Vet Station can be found in earlier promotional material for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and also within its game files. Likewise with the Hunting Platform, which also still has Audio, Ini and even Rig Files within the game.
This game had two working titles before the final Operation Genesis subtitle was instated: "Jurassic Park: Project Genesis" and "Jurassic Park: The Game".
At some point, forest fires were one of the many disasters that could occur in the player's parks. There was also a Sprinkler System that was planned as an upgrade for structures in-game that would have been used to mitigate the aforementioned forest fires. All of this would be removed in the final game.
Originally, the protagonist of Dog's Life was going to be a female dog named Gem, named for the real-world dog of Frontier Developments chairman David Braben.
Within the game's data are unused voice clips for a solo boss fight against Professor Calamitous, who in the released game only appears during the final battle against the full Syndicate. Some of these clips feature Calamitous threatening to destroy Retroville with a doomsday device, a subplot not present in the final game. This implies that Jimmy Neutron's route was originally going to follow the same formula as Danny Phantom, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Timmy Turner's routes, in which the team visits an individual character's world and foils a villainous scheme by an individual member of the Syndicate there. This is corroborated by a pre-release screenshot in which the monochrome Retroville simulation seen in "Fantastic Voyage of Goddard" is instead in full color.
At the time of its release, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis had managed to include nearly every on-screen prehistoric species found in the movies released up to that point ("Jurassic Park", "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic Park III"), with only three notable exceptions:
•Pteranodon (featured in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic Park III") •Compsognathus (featured in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic Park III") •Mamenchisaurus (featured in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park")
Interestingly, out of this batch, the Iquanodon is the only dinosaur to have any more data pertaining to it with its own "Iguan.ini" file, which makes it the only cut species with a known Length (Aprox. 9 Meters Long), Health (500), Life Span (4 Years and 6 Months), and Herd Size (1-15 Individuals). It also had a known attack damage (150), which would have it made it the strongest Ornithopod in the game had it been included.
The development team for this game experimented with baby dinosaurs midway through the project, attempting to use schemes such as scaling the adult dinosaurs down to make them infants. The team realized that this didn't look right and that making proper infant dinosaurs would require new models and AI, which would be similar to the work required for adding more dinosaur species. As a result, baby dinosaurs were dropped, along with any ideas for a "Dino Petting Zoo".
Ben Hurst, one of the writers for the 1993 "Sonic the Hedgehog" animated series, attempted to pitch a continuation of the show to Sega in 2002 as either a third season or a movie. He consulted DiC Entertainment, who produced the show (as well as two other Sonic cartoons, "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" and "Sonic Underground"), and was given the name of a Sega executive who wanted to talk with him more about the idea. Hurst then received a call from Ken Penders, at the time the head writer for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, who had been made aware of Hurst's interest in making a movie based on the series. Hurst offered to include Penders in the project, and told him his strategy for the pitch was to develop a satisfying storyline to conclude the show, and simultaneously giving Sega ideas for new games. This resulted in a long-standing controversy where Hurst claimed that Penders sabotaged his plan by telling Sega that he was trying to co-opt the franchise, resulting in Hurst's dismissal from the project. Over 13 years after Hurst's death, Penders would give his side of the story in a 2023 blog post, claiming that Hurst's joint proposal between the two would involve asking Sega to pay them to produce the series, and doubted that Sega would even schedule a meeting to let them pitch it if Sega funding the pitch was the premise, stating that "the owner of any IP is looking for a payday when it comes to using the rights for their properties."
Wuhu Island was originally created for Wii Sports before its debut appearance in Wii Fit. An early version of the island can be seen in a leaked development image for Wii Sports, and in footage of the unused Airplane sport in the E3 2006 demo for the game. The leaked image also indicates that the Airplane sport would have also given you the option to fly around the island with a Rocket Belt, an idea that would later be reused in Pilotwings Resort.
The uDraw was conceived after THQ employees noticed how difficult drawing was with the Wii Remote in the Wii version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, and was originally called the Drawn to Life Pal. Multiple pitches for other licensed Drawn to Life titles in the same vein as Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition were made, with Marvel Comics, Pixar, Star Wars, and Conan the Barbarian being pitched as examples. However, no Drawn to Life game with uDraw compatibility would ever release, though one uDraw launch title, Dood's Big Adventure, bears a fair resemblance to the series. No reason has been given for the series' absence or why a new IP was made with Dood's Big Adventure instead of using the brand recognition of Drawn to Life, but it may be connected to the controversial ending of the DS version of The Next Chapter and its finality for the core Drawn to Life Raposa universe.
In an interview with the developers at Blue Tongue, they mentioned several buildings they wanted to include in this game, but had to drop due to design decisions or memory constraints on home consoles:
This game had two working titles before the final Operation Genesis subtitle was instated: "Jurassic Park: Project Genesis" and "Jurassic Park: The Game".
At some point, forest fires were one of the many disasters that could occur in the player's parks. There was also a Sprinkler System that was planned as an upgrade for structures in-game that would have been used to mitigate the aforementioned forest fires. All of this would be removed in the final game.
Within the game's data are unused voice clips for a solo boss fight against Professor Calamitous, who in the released game only appears during the final battle against the full Syndicate. Some of these clips feature Calamitous threatening to destroy Retroville with a doomsday device, a subplot not present in the final game. This implies that Jimmy Neutron's route was originally going to follow the same formula as Danny Phantom, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Timmy Turner's routes, in which the team visits an individual character's world and foils a villainous scheme by an individual member of the Syndicate there. This is corroborated by a pre-release screenshot in which the monochrome Retroville simulation seen in "Fantastic Voyage of Goddard" is instead in full color.