With all the work that goes into developing video games, do you ever wonder what gets left behind? It's a common occurrence for developers to leave all sorts of graphics, music, secret messages, and other tidbits in their games.
As it turns out, there's a website that's completely dedicated to finding unused content in games. It's called The Cutting Room Floor (TCRF), and it's definitely worth a look if you're into games.
The Best Gaming Easter Eggs and Deleted Content
TCRF is set up like other wikis you may have visited. The homepage provides a featured articles, trivia, and even links to contribute if you're interested.
Use the Search box in the top-right to look for a game, or browse by various criteria using the links on the left. Start with the best platformers of all time if you need some inspiration.
Once you land on a game's page, you'll see a breakdown of all the neat content inside. Common types of deleted content on TCRF include:
- Debug modes: Many games feature a mode that allows you to manipulate the game for testing purposes.
- Unused graphics: Find sprites, fonts, items, enemies, and more that didn't make it into the game.
- Unused music: Here you'll find tunes that weren't used in the final game for whatever reason.
- Revisional differences: This section shows what changed between revisions (often quite interesting for older games).
- Regional differences: Similar to the above, this collects differences between the game in different countries.
More than the content alone, what makes this site great is the commentary on the items and thinking about what it implies. It's interesting to speculate on what an unused music track was for, or why a certain expression for a character was cut.
Overall, if you want to go deeper into your favorite games, The Cutting Room Floor is a great place to do so. It's fun to explore what was leftover and what could have been.
For more, check out other awesome game sites you've probably never heard of.