
The Cutting Room Floor: Unearthing Unused Content from Video Games - indescions_2018
https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor
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33degrees
This is pretty cool! Randomly came across this tidbit, regarding one of my
favorite Apple II games: "While Karateka only takes up Side A, Side B contains
a copy of the game modified to play upside-down. According to Jordan Mechner,
this was a practical joke by Brøderbund so tech support could have the delight
of telling someone that their game was upside-down because...they put the disc
in upside-down. Duh."

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cableshaft
Were you aware that Mechner released an ebook that was basically a compilation
of his journals while he developed Karateka? Considering it's one of your
favorite Apple II games, you might find it interesting. I did just as a game
developer. I never even heard of the game, I think I ran into it because he
did the same with Prince of Persia.

It's called "The Making of Karateka". You can find it on Amazon. (Also "The
Making of Prince of Persia")

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33degrees
Thanks, I'll check that out!

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jimmies
All of my favorite games ever are the 2D-era RPGs that I didn't play when I
was young: Fallout 2, Chrono Trigger, Zelda Link to the Past. While CT and
Zelda are relatively polished, Fallout 2 stands out as a piece of programming
crap: buggy and crashes every so often, contents were cut left and right --
but boy, do I love that game. I feel like 30% of the contents were cut in the
final version.

Thankfully that game has an incredible amount of people who love it, and it
must be known to most people who play Fallout 2 by now: the "recommended" way
to play Fallout 2 was to install the Restoration Patch. It restores all the
cut contents back, and makes the game feel way more completed. Fallout 2 RP is
one of the best examples of community patches I have seen.

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hermitdev
Re: Fallout 2, I never played it, started at Fallout 3, but one thing Ive
observed playing Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4, Oblivion and Skyrim, Bethesdas
quality sucks. They may be good at creating a good rpg world and story, but
the stability and quality of the underlying software sucks. From the crashes
(which made New Vegas nearly unplayable at launch) to the stupidity of the AI
followers (I need your help-wait where are you? Did I accidentally kill you?
Nope, followed randomly shows up half our later like nothing was wrong).

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doesnt_know
I agree with your point regardless but just a side note that New Vegas was
actually dev'd by Obsidian and not Bethesda Game Studios like the rest of your
examples.

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baud147258
But they used a lot of tech (like the game engine) from Bethesda Studio to
develop New Vegas. (a bit like they developped KOTOR 2 and NWN 2 using tech
from Bioware)

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aerotwelve
This site has an impressive collection of in-game anti-piracy measures that is
worth checking out [1].

From Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES):

 _Checksum Verification - At the beginning of a level, a checksum is run on
544 bytes worth of code and data which includes all of the above tests, the
PAL /NTSC region check and various initialization routines. If the checksum
generated doesn't match the hardcoded value it compares against (i.e., the
anti-piracy routines were tampered with), RAM address $7E0AFD, which holds the
total number of screens in the level, is decremented by one. This punishes the
player by causing the screen to stop scrolling just before reaching the goal
in a level._[2]

It's so brilliant, yet so evil.

[1] [https://tcrf.net/Category:Games_with_anti-
piracy_methods](https://tcrf.net/Category:Games_with_anti-piracy_methods)

[2]
[https://tcrf.net/Donkey_Kong_Country_2:_Diddy%27s_Kong_Quest...](https://tcrf.net/Donkey_Kong_Country_2:_Diddy%27s_Kong_Quest_\(SNES\))

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GlitchMr
Hm, interesting. Long time ago, I intentionally tried cracking games to detect
anti-piracy methods, and Donkey Kong Countrty 2 was one of those, and I
triggered the empty SRAM check while doing so (and added that to the TCRF
page). I checked the game with more SRAM than the cartridge normally has,
and... nothing??? Checking that is a very typical routine in SNES games, and
yet... I simply assumed due to that it's the only check, and an incompetent
one at that -- first, it would be more evil to let the game continue with no
save RAM only for saves to not work, second, why not check for more RAM.

But then it turns out there are actually were more anti-piracy methods, and
they are quite evil. Wow. I'm not surprised I did not find those considering
how those worked however, I had no reason to change the ROM to add a crack
intro.

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shortformblog
In case anyone is interested in learning more on the site's backstory, I did a
profile on the site and its main operator a couple of years ago:

[https://tedium.co/2016/06/16/hidden-content-video-games-
cutt...](https://tedium.co/2016/06/16/hidden-content-video-games-cutting-room-
floor/)

~~~
nyreed
This is exactly the sort offbeat content I love from your blog. Thanks for
writing it!

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daturkel
This is a great site I've explored for a while now. Some of the entries are
shockingly detailed. Majora's Mask, for N64, for instance has a very long and
organized page
([https://tcrf.net/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Majora%27s_Mask](https://tcrf.net/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Majora%27s_Mask))
as well as separate pages for the debug and prototype versions
([https://tcrf.net/Proto:The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Majora%27s_Mask](https://tcrf.net/Proto:The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Majora%27s_Mask)).
The site Unseen 64 ([https://www.unseen64.net/](https://www.unseen64.net/))
has a similar collection of info on betas/cancelled games.

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CM30
Yeah, I've been a member there for a few years now. Great site, lots of
interesting information about unused content in games. I personally worked on
the pages for Wario Land 3, Wario Land 4 and Zelda Breath of the Wild, and
will contribute a few more things later too.

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NietTim
This is really cool, thanks for sharing OP! I've spent the last hour reading
up on the featured article, on Pokemon Gold and Silver

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m000z0rz
Does anyone have recommendations on where to learn how to discover this unused
content?

