Dummied Out / Action-Adventure Games

Dummied Out in Action-Adventure Games.

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• ANNO: Mutationem: This occurs with the Lore Codex, that is to feature information regarding various locations and phrases mentioned throughout the game is entirely blank due to an unfinished program code that's supposed to unlock it, and the contents can only be found in the game's data.
• About a third of the content of BIONICLE: The Game was removed before release, including two levels that were heavily advertised in promos. These, or at least their bare models, can partially be accessed from (at least) the PS2 version of the game with some coding. By searching through the gamefiles of other releases, all of the original six Toa's character models can also be exported, even though only two ended up being playable in the game. You can also find some HUD logos that weren't used.
• The trailer for Creepy Castle had some scenes that were originally going to be used, but due to them not matching the song, these scenes were either shortened, making some parts unseen:
  • The first scene shows Moth about to start his adventure, and does so with great pride. However, he gradually slows down before stopping and, realizing that Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress, turns to the camera and crashes to the ground.
  • The second scene shows a bruised Moth collapsing, just as a worm passes by. Moth takes a look at it before the worm turns to reveal that it has Moth's face, freaking Moth out.
  • The third scene shows Moth sighing in relief on having finally made it to the top of a cliff. But he has set his bag of important items on the cliff's edge, and it falls off, shocking Moth. Moth then looks down, taking a few seconds to realize his mistake of setting his bag on the cliff's edge, and then yells out in frustration, shaking a bit slightly, though it is difficult to see.
  • The fourth scene has Moth looking at the stick for a while longer before blowing on it.
  • The final scene shows Moth approaching the Creepy Castle, while in the final trailer, he is already at the entrance.
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game had a handful of concepts that were scrapped, but still have remnants laying around on the disc:
  • There was originally intended to be a level centering around a Thanksgiving Day parade, which would have included possessed floats attacking large crowds of citizens. The concept got far enough along that it had its level layout and crowd AI completed, but it was scrapped before release for unknown reasons.
  • There's an alternate version of the intro scene for the museum level still present in the game files. The only real difference is an alternate background for the scene — the dialogue is the same as in the final game.
  • The trailer also has shots of a scene where several ghosts chase the Ecto-1B down a street, which never happens in the game.
• Kameo: Elements of Power curiously has a very large amount of concept art and, more importantly, alpha cutscenes depicting a substantial amount of game mechanics that never made it to the final product, including what appears to be a garden for the baby versions of the Elemental Warriors, multiple situations depicted in the cutscenes that don't happen in the final game, small dragon sidekicks for Kameo and her sister, and several locations not found in the final product. All of this cut content is understandable considering Kameo's lengthy development cycle as well as its final rushed schedule to get Kameo into the launch window of the Xbox 360.
• Landstalker had a bath scene that the censors felt was a bit too naughty for the American release. Rather than delete it they just blocked off the room it takes place in by putting an NPC in front of it. It was fully translated, even in PAL releases.
• Reportedly, the original build of L.A. Noire was so large that the developers had to cut out two whole department desks and several cases from the ones that they did leave in just to fit the core story onto three game disks. However, the cut content was later released as DLC.
  • Which meant that it would have been seven discs on Xbox 360, and two discs on PS3. This is because MotionScan technology used for the faces saves 30 models per second, like a 3D form of video. A ten-second facial animation file takes up about 50MB of space uncompressed.
• Legacy of Kain:
  • Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain contains a pirate ship that was long believed to be an example. It was discovered by a few Russian fans 14 years after the release of Blood Omen who were data-mining the game, and when discussed with Silicon Knights head Denis Dyack, he claimed that it could be reached legitimately. It took another ten years to uncover that method, which amounts to a very, very thorough Pixel Hunt across most of Nosgoth.
  • Lots (if not most) of the content in the original Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver was dummied out or simply cut (including the entire ending) due to time constraints. Most notably, the original design included an entire area underneath the human city, which housed a cult of vampire worshippers led by a priestess, who would've given Raziel a new power after he defeated her. Almost all of the missing content was recycled in the sequels.
    • Among the other things missing from the game is a vampire brother boss (leading to a minor plot hole,) and the fact that the Soul Reaver was originally broken up into multiple elemental sabers. Only the fire-elemental sword made it past pre-production, giving it a kind of Master Sword effect.
    • There are also assets for the lava themed Dark Eden area, which would've been a Continuity Nod to the first game.
    • Hacking the game has revealed several unused elemental reavers, including a Spirit Reaver and Dark Reaver, and exploring the game's sound files has even revealed what the original, planned ending was to be: After the fight at the Chronoplast (which is where the original game ended), Kain would flee to his mountain retreat, and Raziel would have to imbue the Soul Reaver with Ariel's soul and chase him there, fighting and defeating Kain for the last time, finishing by opening the sounding pipes of the Silenced Cathedral to simultaneously kill every remaining vampire in Nosgoth. The only normally accessible remnants of this content are the cryptic visions in the Chronoplast, hinting at events to come. Notably, the Chronoplast visions are a dead giveaway that things were cut with the intent to be wrapped up later, if looked at with the benefit of hindsight; they don't exactly match the events when they happen. Ariel being absorbed by the Reaver is the most obvious, as Raziel is shown striking her with the wraith blade; in Defiance, he merely takes her hand. After the game was released, Crystal Dynamics admitted that they made a deliberate decision to scrap their planned ending, which they had time to finish, because they'd come to believe it wasn't in the spirit of the series. As they barely had time to plan out where to make the plot go, it's amazing that the predictions for the future they showed here came true at all.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has unique window graphics for all dungeons, even though the fourth and sixth dungeons don't have any windows. The unused window graphics can be seen by using the "Fairy Warp" glitch^note transforming into a fairy above the top of the screen, then moving left or right to load the first dungeon's layout with another dungeon's graphics. There are also unused Spikes of Doom graphics for each dungeon.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
    • In its original SNES incarnation, the game had a secret room which required a near-superhuman effort to get to. While Chris Houlihan's Top Secret Room (so named after the winner of a Nintendo Power competition, the prize being his name being inserted into the game) is present in the GBA remake, the method to access it has been removed, as has Chris Houlihan's name. The code is only accessible in the remake through cheating. Strictly speaking, Chris Houlihan's room was never intended to be accessible at all — it's the "emergency room" the game sends you to if the proper data is not available.
    • Either through a bug or some obscurely intentional game design, "ghosts" roam the Dark World's Swamp of Evil^note Typically, however, they are confusingly referred to as the Ghosts of Misery Mire; Misery Mire is actually the dungeon in the swamp area. They seem to be invisible versions of the Dark World equivalents of Zoras, the Ku (this version was presumably supposed to be able to walk on land when they spawn in shallow water, similarly to Zoras, before being scrapped, something they can do in A Link Between Worlds), and are located on the lower floor layer that can only be accessed via glitch. They are uninteractible and all but unkillable except with certain superweapons. Just drop Bombos magic near where you first warp into the swamp from the Light World and watch the flames of the dying appear from nowhere.
    • Two unused rooms also exist in the game memory, which appear to be duplicates of the Ice Palace Fairy Fountain and the easternmost room of floor B6. The exits from these rooms, however, lead to different places from the normal versions. There are also several unused graphics, including one supposed to be used for the statues in Skull Woods dungeon, though this graphic ended up being used in the Palace of the Four Sword bonus dungeon in the Game Boy Advance version (though not Skull Woods).
    • There are several dummied-out enemies in A Link to the Past, including a soldier with a cannon. They were saved for the GBA Edition, which in turn dummied out two rooms in the ice dungeon, to simplify an otherwise Nintendo Hard puzzle requiring moving blocks across several floors.
    • A functional, fully-coded upgrade for 1/4th magic exists in the game's code, but isn't accessible outside of hacking. It seems like this was probably mostly left out because half magic was enough of an upgrade, quartering it would end up being overkill and trivializing puzzles requiring MP management and make fighting enemies too easy.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time took such an absurd amount of turns and detours during development that the earliest trailers of the game look absolutely nothing like the final version — it's completely unrecognizable. For the sake of sanity, only some of the remnants remaining in the final code will be shown here.
    • The game contains a fully functioning Arwing enemy. Yes, from Star Fox. It was lifted straight from Star Fox 64 put in by the designers as a base for the motion pattern of Volvagia, the dragon boss, as described here. The only known way to access it is by using a cheating device to make it appear, or to tilt the game cartridge at the precise moment (enter "Crooked Cartridge Glitch" into your favorite search engine) a treasure chest is opened.
    • Various elements would have been accessed with the N64 Disk Drive. The disk drive was never released outside Japan, and the extra content didn't come out there either; the "Master Quest" included in later rereleases of the games is supposedly at least part of what was intended for the disk drive content, but it's not the half of it. When the Disk Drive crashed and bombed, the team was given a year to make The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask instead.
    • There's a rumour on YouTube surrounding the Unicorn Fountain room seen in a trailer or two. Supposedly it was found in a door underwater in Zora's Domain, and was meant to be the location of the Triforce. The last part has never been confirmed, but the earliest trailer of the game showed Link obtaining the Triforce from a treasure chest in a watery throne room at the end of some dungeon.
    • The original models for the female Kokiri. Most notably Fado, who is speculated to have been intended to be the Wind Sage earlier in development (coincidentally, the Wind Sage in The Wind Waker is also named Fado, although male), and since her name isn't given in the game itself in the final version her name is only known because it was on the website for the game. She does have a little more significance than the rest of the Kokiri barring Mido and Saria, as she plays a part in the Biggoron's Sword sidequest.
    • The six medallions are programmed in as equippable items, although they don't work even if you try a GameShark. Originally the medallions were going to fill the niche now occupied by the warp songs. However, this discovery led to something more interesting: The Wind and Ice Medallions. Although no graphics have been found corresponding to them and GameSharking them into the game doesn't work, it seems they were meant to be in the game at some point. There is evidence that the Ice Cavern (which in the final version is merely a detour taken to get the Iron Boots needed to access and navigate the Water Temple) was meant to be larger at one point in development, so there's the Ice Medallion, but nobody except the developers knows what the Wind Medallion would have been for, though the Forest section of Ganon's Castle is entirely based around wind puzzles (using fans akin to the ones found in the Shadow Temple) and bears little resemblance to the Forest Temple, and coincidentally, the Forest Sage in the final version, Saria, is a Kokiri like both the original female Fado in Ocarina of Time and the male one in The Wind Waker.
    • The game also contains leftover code for an interesting attack - shooting beams from Link's sword! Some hacks have partially restored the ability, which can harm or kill distant enemies but doesn't actually appear to hit them: the projectile briefly appears in front of Link and fades away without moving. Also, it is used the same way as a spin attack (holding down the button and charging up), rather than being at full health. It isn't immediately clear if this was intended to replace the spin attack when Z-targeting was used, or why exactly it was taken out.
    • Gerudo's Fortress has an extra Heart Piece that is inaccessible except with cheats/hacking — it's only present when Link is a child, but Link can't enter the area until he's an adult because a guard blocks his path when he's a child.
    • In Zora's Fountain, there is a cliff behind Lord Jabu-Jabu that is completely inaccessible. There's a spawn point there, and the cliff textures extend quite a bit beyond the masking trees, but none of it is used. There's also a dummied-out ocarina pedestal that was supposed to appear in front of Jabu-Jabu. It was also originally possible to jump off the waterfall in Zora's Fountain to go to Zora's River, but it was blocked by a fence for unknown reasons in the final game, as seen here with an also-unused Triforce area transition.
    • In both this game and Majora's Mask, Navi/Tatl has a description for Gold Skulltulas, but it's unused since they can't be Z-Targeted. The same is true for Dead Hand's Hands and Big Poes in OoT.
    • Several pieces of text remain in the game, likely as use for Developer's Foresight, but there is no way to access them. Of particular note is some text from Saria hinting about the location of the Goron's Ruby. Saria would give you this hint if you talked to her after completing Jabu-Jabu's Belly, but before obtaining the Goron's Bracelet from Darunia. It's normally impossible to do this because accessing Jabu-Jabu requires blowing up the rocks blocking Zora's River with bombs, and the Bomb Bag can only be obtained after getting the Goron's Bracelet.
      Saria: The Great Deku Tree once told me that Mr. Darunia of the Gorons has it...
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • The magic meter was taken out some time before release (there's a visible magic meter in a screenshot on the back of the Wii version's box). Consequently all potions and such that would replenish it were taken out with it. Now, you have to know that in the game there are slime monsters (ChuChus) that drop potions in their color when killed. So all the green ones of those monsters were taken out, too. But ChuChus of different color can merge into each other and thus become a ChuChu of a new color. At one point of the game it is still possible to let a blue and a yellow ChuChu merge (except in the GameCube version), thus becoming green and thus dropping green potion, which is used to replenish magic. And it does... nothing! Nintendo brought Green Chu Jelly back in the Wii U version, complete with added text acknowledging the fact that it does nothing when consumed.
    • Magic would have been required to transform into wolf form. as evidenced by some unused text found on the disk.
    • Some hackers found an unusable beta item called Fire Arrows with translated description but no in-game model.
    • There are many scrapped areas in the overworld, featured on early promotional videos. Namely, a different forest (the trees used in the demo are still in the final build, but without collision detection), a river near your hometown (the kayak was supposed to be used more than once, so this was for the better), and the Ocarina of Time version of the market in the town. Interacting with animals was supposed to have a more important role. Glitching through some of the seemingly Bottomless Pits would allow you to access some modeled areas. The TP overworld was supposed to be even more massive.
    • There are a few leftover enemies who are still in the game code, including a Twilight Palace monster that can knock you 10 ft. away just by hitting you, and a two-story golem made of rolled-up Gorons. A video of these two can be seen here. They have incomplete collision detection, sadly.
    • Only two unused rooms remain in the code, and one of them is blank, which is quite disappointing. The one that remains is an early version of the Snowpeak Ruins miniboss corridor, and it has an interesting feature: object placement is from an even older version of the room. The objects betray that the room was originally a much larger, hexagonal arena similar to a traditional boss room.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
    • The game has chest data for some rooms that don't have chests in them. This means that if someone used a hacked ROM to put a chest in those rooms, they'd be able to get what was originally supposed to be there (Rupees, mostly, but there's chest data for the shovel and bow, two items that, in the final version, can't be obtained without buying or stealing them from the shop in Mabe Village). By default, a chest stuck in a room without chest data will give you the Power Bracelet (or its upgraded version).
    • There's also an arrangement of Totaka's Song in the music data that is not currently known to play anywhere in-game. (If it's found, it would be the third version of the song in the game.) However, out of the two other versions, one was dummied out in every version except the original Japanese version and the German translation of the DX version — it required "Totakeke" (Kazumi Totaka's nickname, later used as another name for K.K. Slider in Animal Crossing) to be entered as Link's name in the Japanese version or "MOYSE" (in all caps) using the same method in the German version, with that version's name being taken from the writer of the German script, Claude Moyse (entering "MOYSE" into the non-DX version instead played a song exclusive to the German version).
    • There is a large amount of source code for the Turbo C IDE and QBASIC editor as well as a list of assembly filenames contained in unused sectors of the cartridge, though this was probably put in by mistake.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
    • There's data for an item called the Water Boots. Putting them on causes Link to do the animation for putting boots on, but they don't appear and don't do anything.
    • At least 27% of the data on the disk goes unused. Some of the data is in a format incompatible with the format used to store the final rooms and models. The room used for the Spaceworld 2001 demo still exists in the final game, but only in an Autodesk Maya text-based format that only stores the collision data. There are also a surprisingly large number of test rooms, all of which are accessible with an Action Replay. As mentioned before, the first room contains transparent water. This first test room is actually a partly recycled version of the test room of Super Mario Sunshine.
    • The workshop in the head of the tower on Tingle Island, mentioned in Tingle Tuner quests but never visited in-game, can also be found in the files.
    • There are some hidden, unused entrances in the Hyrule Castle area below the sea: Two are on the Castle itself, while one is on an unreachable (and invisible in normal gameplay) mountain surrounding the top of Ganon's Tower.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap:
    • The Fire Rod was planned to be an item in the game and is even mistakenly referenced by the Ice Wizzrobe figurine in the European version, which claims they're vulnerable to it (the North American version instead refers to them as being weak to fire in general). While the Fire Rod has an unused icon, it functions as a debug item letting you change tiles. An unused dungeon, and alternative beta layouts for existing ones exist also.
    • A jump command has been found via GameShark (in the final version, jumping is only possible using Roc's Cape; presumably, Roc's Cape, if it were planned at that point, was originally only going to upgrade the jumping ability to make it possible to float across larger gaps rather than being required for jumping as well). A music track for the ending theme from Ocarina of Time (itself a remix of that game's Lost Woods theme) and an alternative music for the final dungeon lies unused within the game.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures has an unused music file named smw.ast (.ast is one of Nintendo's proprietary recorded music formats) in %root%/GC4Sword_usa/Audiores/stream/. If you haven't guessed from the title of the file yet, the track is actually a recording of the Special World version of the Super Mario Bros. theme found in Super Mario World! Keep in mind that Four Swords Adventures uses exclusively MIDI music for tracks, so the file can't even be played in-game. Because of its proprietary format, the track seems to not be intended for playing by the general public, but through hacking, someone made the VGMStream plugin for Winamp, which allows the playing of Nintendo's proprietary recorded music formats. Video here.
• LEGO Dimensions includes unused icons for young Harry, Hermione, and Ron in their Hogwarts uniforms as well as graphical assets for the Chaotix.
• YouTube user PikolUploader has found some interesting stuff by emulating Shadow of the Colossus on a PC: Some mountains referred to as "the beta mountains", a duplicate bridge that lies beyond the edge of the Forbidden Lands, and a few other things. And apparently there is a duplicate Shrine of Worship, which is actually used in-game as the setting for the final cutscene. If the game is played on an emulator with the right graphical tricks enabled, the player can actually see the original Shrine in the distance, while the cutscene takes place in the duplicate. This is probably due to a shortcut in the graphics engine: Since the Shrine is so tall, and thus visible from large distances, the game always renders it. During normal gameplay, the original is either occluded from view or hidden by lighting effects.
  • Pikol's Big Secret revealed an area which apparently included a dam, bridge, and what looks like tracks of some sort (reminiscent of a short sequence in Ico). One really has to wonder what the area was going to be used for.
  • Although apparently not left in the code, there are two Colossi seen in early screenshots not in the final game: a phoenix and a dragon.
  • There were once plans for over forty Colossi you could fight in-game. A bit too ambitious for PS2 era technology, it was eventually reduced to approximately twenty Colossi. Deadlines and technical limitations persisted, which eventually led to the sixteen Colossi known in-game. Of the original 48 that didn't make the cut, a few of the known ones besides the ones stated above were: a giant spider colossus, a boar, a griffon, an imp, another bird similar to Avion, a monkey, and a sand worm.
  • Not even in-game Colossi are immune to this. The first Colossus has a bending down animation similar to the fifth Colossus, implying that the ruins in the area was going to be used in fighting it. The third Colossus's blade was originally flatter, having a sweeping attack instead of a bashing attack, and the area where you battle Malus was suppose to be more complicated, sporting multiple pathways to get to him instead of the one (intentional) path to get to him in game. He was also supposed to move around instead of standing in one static spot in the original.
• The US version of Spud's Adventure took out a cutscene of Devi's sister persuading him not to attack Spud midway through the tower.
• Tomb Raider:
  • Tomb Raider III had an unused animation that allowed Lara to roll forward while crouched down, hidden in the files. The animation has since been enabled for use in custom levels.
  • Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation includes an unused level called "The Valley Temple," known by the file name joby1b.tr4. It was most likely meant to be one of the Giza levels along with "The Sphinx Complex," "The Mastabas," and "Menkakure's Pyramid," since there are three exits, but probably ended up being removed as that section of the game was hard enough for regular players.
  • Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness:
    • The Shaman was a character cut from the game. She would have been seen in flashbacks detailing how Lara survived her fate in the ending of The Last Revelation. Although she, and her plotline, were removed from the final game, text files of her dialogue can still be found within the game files.
    • The first level, Parisian Back Streets, has a large unfinished area which is normally inaccessible, and was meant to be used for the tutorial. The area is accessible through cheats, and is complete with camera angles and sound files.
    • There is a large amount of unused sound files, including control explanations for the unfinished tutorial, most of which refer to features that were removed from the game. There are also conversations that were cut and tons of unused enemy dialogue. Interestingly, quite a bit of Lara's cut dialogue include Continuity Nods to previous games in the series.
    • There are lots of hidden items, including Lara's aforementioned dual pistols, a harpoon gun, and an unused amulet.
    • According to various sound files, Lara was originally able to buy items from Renne's Pawnshop and the Willowtree Herbalist.
    • There was also meant to be a plotline of Lara finding out that Bouchard (likely a shapeshifting Karel) was seen in an alley at the Monstrum Crimescene, sometime after she found his corpse.

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