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: Manley & Associates
Publisher: Enix
Released: 1994, Super Nintendo
Much like how Squaresoft created Square USA to develop Secret of Evermore completely in America, Enix had a game of their own made in the states by developer Manley & Associates, then located in Seattle, Washington. A game based on King Arthur would make sense, since Americans are very familiar with the legend, but Enix took it one step further and based the game on a cartoon about football players who travel back in time to Camelot called King Arthur & the Knights of Justice.
The cartoon only lasted two seasons, and the game was met with much criticism. Not all of it was undeserved, though: it's notoriously glitchy, has an awkward password-based saving system, and uses some rather shallow and repetitive design, all of which suggest it was released in an unfinished state.
However, because so much was cut from the game for whatever reasons (budget and time constraints being most likely), it has turned out to be a real treasure trove of unused graphics, dialogue, items, and other content. Some elements (such as an unused cutscene) reveal how much more ambitious the project originally was, while others (mainly unused "fetch quest" items) were most likely removed to make the game less tedious than it already is.
While nobody (probably not even the developers) would argue that King Arthur & the Knights of Justice is a great game, it is an undeniably interesting little page in SNES history.
All Featured BlurbsDid You Know...
- ...that the Atari 7800 port of Karateka wants to plant subliminal messages in your brain?
- ...that Yoshi once had more transformations in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island?
- ...that Shang Tsung was meant to have a fatality in the arcade version of Mortal Kombat?
- ...that Kintaro was originally meant to have an intro in Mortal Kombat II like Goro did in Mortal Kombat?
- ...that Super Mario Sunshine had four areas and a railroad system that were cut from the final game?
- ...that Shinobi III supports a then-unreleased controller through a cheat code?
- ...that at least 11 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
Ditto was a cut Pokémon during Super Smash Bros. Melee's development.
Using one of the Debug Menu's many tools, it's possible to choose which Pokémon will spawn from a Poké Ball. One of these Pokémon is Ditto, listed under its Japanese name of 'Metamon'. If a Poké Ball containing Ditto is thrown, it will pop out, briefly shout its Japanese name, and vanish. Ditto was presumably removed late in development, as it is mentioned in the official Melee strategy guide. Only one instance of Ditto can be on-screen at a time.
Ditto was later properly implemented 17 years later in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: When summoned, it transforms into the fighter that summoned it and fights alongside them. This was likely intended to be its effect in Melee as well.
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