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  • In American Truck Simulator, the Western Star 57X was released with two cab options: A day cab and a 72-inch sleeper cab. However, in the game files a 48-inch sleeper cab was discovered in a fully completed condition, and could easily be reactivated with a bit of tinkering (the files have since been removed, but are preserved via modding). This is related to real world events, as a 48-inch sleeper cab configuration for the Western Star 57X was planned, but cancelled at the very last second seemingly for pandemic-related supply chain issues.
  • Animal Crossing:
    • In Animal Crossing (2001), the "Dummy" Item escaped though a mistake in the igloo trading game. It has the appearance of a white triangle with the English word "dummy" written on it in katakana.
    • Similarly, if one hacks an item not meant to be in the game at all, and then drops it outside, there is a chance it will either A) become invisible and thus impossible to pick up again (and also make that tile unusable to drop any other item on it since it's "used"), B) shuffle among the icons of other droppable items (such as a bag, a pitfall, furniture leaves, etc), or interestingly, C) become a fish frozen in-mid flop. That last is a remnant from the original Japan-only N64 version, in which fish would flop over land into the nearest body of water when dropped instead of flying straight in.
    • There is also a list of 60 or so other left out items that have names, but are otherwise exactly like the DUMMY item. Some of them would appear in future games (massage chair, spa bath, lucky cat), while others are just plain bizarre (moon dumpling, unused monkey, robotic flagman)!
    • There are two animals in the source code of Animal Crossing (2001) that never appear in-game: a squirrel named Shaki and a cat known only as CAT13. Their originally intended purpose is unknown.
    • Also, the NES Games The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. are only available in the GameCube game via Action Replay.
    • A game-breaking item exists in the GameCube version, dubbed the 'paper airplane'. Dropping it outside places a little paper airplane on the ground. What's so bad about that? Well, exiting and entering a building creates a duplicate, entering and exiting again creates two duplicates, followed by four, then eight, then... you're starting to get the picture here. They will eventually spread like wildfire, locking up the whole acre, and if it continues, your whole town! And don't bother trying to pick them up, they'll appear to be gone, but they are still there and will come back, complete with multiplying, when you enter and exit again.
    • In Animal Crossing: Wild World, the game will treat any item that isn't defined in the game code as a pitfall... but only if you receive the item in-game, because the check for this is built into the item-reward code. With Action Replay you can get any item, including an item that completely bricks the game card if you drop it in someone else's town.
    • Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer was never released in South Korea for unknown reasons, but Korean translations of various graphics can be found in the code.
  • MechWarrior Living Legends has two unfinished transport VTOLs, the Karnov and the Anhur, in the game files . Neither can be built or used normally, but they can be placed in a custom map, then used in-game. Originally planned to function like a gunship and a vehicle and battlearmor transporter, its tendency to violently murder anything in the back and its screwy physics caused it to be put on the development backburner. It was never finished courtesy of the game being Screwed by the Lawyers.
  • Nintendogs had two breeds of dog which were available in the original three versions but were unobtainable: Maltese and Pappion. Maltese would later be added to the game's sequel.
  • Railroad Tycoon has graphics for the GP 40 which can be seen rolling through the intro sequence. It's also mentioned in the manual, complete with stats. But it does not appear in-game. Railroad Tycoon can only handle 32 locomotives, and the Gresley A1 is available in two different versions for England and Europe, leaving no free slot for the GP 40.
  • The Sims:
    • Supposedly the base game of The Sims 2 was supposed to have weather, but the code was commented out when they couldn't prevent the rain from falling through the roofs of buildings. An expanded version was wrapped up into the Seasons expansion pack. Pre-Seasons houses are not all weather-proof, though, and many have to be altered.
    • An Expansion Pack introduced the object magic lamp, which when rubbed summoned a genie. The player could ask for something predetermined, e.g. love or beauty. There was code that would supposedly give the option for sims to change their age bracket, but that was dummied out.
    • There also is a Debug mode that is only accessible by using a cheat code in Create A Sim which allows you to access hidden outfits that for whatever reason are not available in the game (along with NPC outfits and career outfits).
    • Also, some pieces of furniture were included in the game code but, for some reason, were unavailable in Buy Mode. This content, known as "Maxis Lost & Found", has been extracted by players and made available for download.
  • SimCity has its fair share of hidden content, some of which was discovered by mere accident by modders:
    • In 3000, some of the game's adviser panels would display buildings that didn't exist or couldn't be found in the game; this included what appeared to be a smaller version of the Maximum Security Prison, a variation of the apartment building Rock Bottom Terrace, and some bizarre rocket-ship-shaped building.
      • The SimCity 2000 theme is still in 3000, but can't be found in the music list. Additionally, the track "Concrete Jungle" that was in 3000 was for some reason removed from the SimCity 3000 Unlimited playlist. Some judicious editing of game files will fix both of those.
      • Some hidden contents in 3000 can be accessed through a cheat. This includes the SimCity Castle and tiles to make real-size airports (compared to the surrounding buildings) instead of the small-scale airports. It's also possible to get a very useful 'Better Bulldozing'-tool through the editing of a configuration file, which allows things like half-highways. Furthermore, by importing a grayscale file you can have maps that are impossible to create in the map-editor.
    • In Sim City Deluxe (as well as the original game and separate expansion pack), there was supposed to be some extra tools that would allow you to change the color of the terrain, create lakes at various altitudes (like in a mountain gorge), and plant various species of trees, but weren't available in the final product (mods do offer some of these, but most aren't permanent and won't save in the city). And if you also look at Rush Hour's additional music tracks, you'll find that some numbers aren't there (it appears that there were going to be about 15 new music tracks, but not all made it). There also appears that there was some kind of on-screen advisor or some kind assistant who would point things out that had a full body model and even UI panels, but he shows up no where in the actual game.
    • The Sim City 4 expansion came with an unfinished transportation network. It's impossible to mod a new "real" transportation network, but this unfinished network allowed a major mod.
  • In Slime Rancher, in addition to a number of chroma packs and standard objects not making the cut some more functional things also didn't make it in:
    • Meteor Slimes were at one point fully coded but were cut for "not working" and for being redundant as they behaved similarly to Dervish Slimes according to the game's developer. Their favorite food were Silver Parsnips, they fell from the sky like meteors (hence the name) and had the ability to attract items they drew close to which would then get a low gravity effect for around 10 seconds.
    • Though their largos actually did make the cut and appear in The Wilds, pure small Sabre Slimes do exist in the game's code and are fully functional, complete with a Secret Style Pack variant, save for the inability to vacuum them up. A mod exists that fixes this and gives them natural spawn points, effectively reintroducing them to the game.
    • A fully functioning Tier 4 Treasure Cracker upgrade exists in the game, but was removed as no Tier 4 Treasure Pods were ever designed for the game.
    • A fully-functional weather function exists in the game which will make it randomly cloud over and rain, and said rainfall even damages The Tarr if they're caught in it. According to the devs it was originally intended for ponds to not provide infinite water and need to refill overtime, with rain being a random benefit that would completely refill them in an instant.
    • A number of functional modifiers exist in the game that change the rules of the game, such as chickens becoming feral at night, a 5% random chance of Tarr spawning at night, random plorts being produced 10% of the time, exploding plorts, increased slime spawns, and slimes getting hungry twice as fast could all be toggled on and off. They're still there, but the mode where they could be toggled on (Iron Rancher Mode) was removed, rendering them inaccessable without modding.
  • Stardew Valley:
    • A whole slew of weapons—some the weapons of bachelor(ette)s—are in the game's code.
    • The original character sprites from the beta are still in the game files. Haley's shows up during part of her 8 heart event, but the rest cannot be accessed without hacks or mods.
    • A glitchy unused mountain summit area can be found north of the railroad if you use an out of bounds glitch. Early screenshots showed part the intended path there from the railroad. Once you get there, you're stuck, so be sure to bring along a warp totem or return scepter.
    • Files exist for an item called the "Jukebox Ring"; the description indicates that it would play a random assortment of music from the game when you equipped it.
  • Story of Seasons:
    • In Harvest Moon 64, there's a scrapped character called "Princess Vanilla". She's purple haired with a white dress. Princess Vanilla was turned into a turtle, kidnapped from her home, the Prune Kingdom in Flower Country, by a mole, and was being forced to marry a frog. The player finds the princess after she talks to a few Harvest Sprites. If Pete chooses to pick her up, he will become a turtle as well. Eventually, possibly from a kiss from a bachelorette, Pete returns to normal, and proceeds to turn the princess back as well. From then on, Princess Vanilla stays in Flowerbud as a regular character. It's unknown why she was scrapped.
    • Dummied Out items in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life include an Ax item implying you could cut down trees like in other games, two fishing lures implying more in-depth fishing, three unused music records, and two Nursing Bottles implying that the toddler was supposed to appear as a baby.
    • Harvest Moon: Animal Parade features slower, remixed versions of the seasonal themes that play at nightfall. These actually play in-game, when you're out on the field, running around, and they change according to the season. Fugue Forest's swamp section and Toucan Island even have their own slow nighttime music. It's also possible that, in Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, the slower variations of the seasonal themes were supposed to kick in outside, during nightfall, and for whatever reason, it was scrapped in favor of the traditionally silent evenings the series usually has and the nighttime spring music just got shoved into the inn.
  • Wing Commander Prophecy was originally slated to have multiplayer capability, but development resources prevented it from being finished. Unfortunately, the work had proceeded for long enough to have made it into an ad for the then-upcoming game. A fan Game Mod later added the capability to play against others online.
  • X3: Terran Conflict has a couple dozen starships that were not included in the final cut of the game, though only three of them were actually finished (the rest were still placeholders). The ATF Valhalla and Woden made it into the next game, while the Xenon Unknown Object was a leftover from the previous one. The Pirate Caravel was removed in a patch because it had a rather serious bug that Egosoft apparently had trouble fixing.


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