Video Game Prototypes That Changed During Development - Nintendo, Sonic, SpongeBob & More!

from their conception to their announcement to their release video games go through countless changes during development just like any piece of media every game goes through tons of work before becoming what we know them as today you have to pitch the game create a mountain of concept art make the alpha beta prototype builds and even after a game's release it might still see some slight revisions game development has always been a fascinating topic to many and that's likely because when games are first shown off they're often very different from how they look when they're released thanks to early trailers press releases and even demos we get a rare glimpse at early stages of a game's development today i'd like to go through some notable examples of early builds of some of our favorite games may they be betas prototypes or even cancelled releases most of the time especially for older games the only way we got to see anything from these early versions were from magazines or events because of it being so limited many of these have since been lost to time however sometimes early builds do get leaked and sometimes even released officially and that's always incredibly exciting you never know where one of these will turn up take this super mario brothers 2 prototype that was found in the garage sale now that's the dream it's always a miracle when any of these are archived no matter the game not every company keeps great backups of their unfinished work and even those that do nothing's pushing them to release any of this all of this makes prototypes or unfinished builds of games in general extremely interesting so let's talk about it this is a look at some of the most interesting video game prototypes that change during development let's begin when it comes to the first game of a franchise that's where a lot of early concepts and ideas can be found before you begin developing the first game in a series you need to completely design its world and everything that brings thankfully for most popular characters out there their development is well documented given its historical nature we know a lot about sonic the hedgehog's creation but in terms of sonic 1's actual development a good deal of it is still shrouded in mystery the sonic the hedgehog franchise was shown off publicly for the first time ever at the 1990 tokyo toy show which was held that year from june 7th through the 10th in japan at the event there was a playable demo of what would become sonic 1. these are screenshots of what was the world's first ever glimpse at sonic the hedgehog and as you can immediately tell it looks totally different than the final game this demo was made right at the beginning of the game's development a year out from when it would release in north america this was a small scale tech demo put together by sonic team for the event to promote the game but tragically this hugely important fascinating moment in the series history is almost completely undocumented this is an unfortunate trend with early game builds documentation for a lot of them is generally pretty poor it makes sense why would a company keep all these unfinished builds once the game is finished the final product is what's going to be sold who's to say there will be anyone interested in these unfinished revisions when a game becomes iconic though people will want to know everything there is to know about it but unfortunately with cases like sonic 1 it seems like that just isn't possible outside of these screenshots we have next to nothing from this demo now you might be thinking well why doesn't sega just release it surely they still have backups of it right for years it was unknown that these screenshots even came from a playable demo it looked so radically different from any other build of the game but in an interview done by game's radar at summer of sonic 2011 yuchinaka confirmed that sonic team produced a playable demo for tokyo toy show 1990. he stated in 1990 the team created a demo for a toy show there was no tokyo game show so the major show to go to at the time was this toy show so they used this as a playable demo to show what sonic would be like and to show the breakneck speed that sonic has this actually has got seven layers of background scrolling a lot of effort went into creating it but along with confirming it he's also said that he's made efforts to locate the demo but has never been successful in that same interview he adds when we created sonic mega collection we thought it would be a great addition to have the original prototype that we used the first one shown in the world but it's just nowhere to be found and it's such a great shame that we can't find it that's right the original sonic 1 demo is completely lost not even the people who made it can find it and this interview was from 2011 surely more efforts had been made to find it since mega collection but it's still lost even now the rom just doesn't exist anymore and that is so sad naka states that even screenshots of the demo are very rare only a few magazines are known to have featured it there have been many hoaxes of it over the years but the genuine demo that was so advanced for its time the one that announced sonic is gone it did inspire the background of green hill zone act 2 and sonic mania though there's the possibility that maybe these assets are still in the source code of sonic 1 over at sega of japan but if they didn't keep a copy of this build do they even have the source code anymore they might not many source files of older games have been lost over the years with famous examples even being of other sega games it's hard to even imagine a scenario of how this could still be out there maybe the people behind tokyo toy show have footage of everything ever shown at their events sega must have gotten the demo approved before it was showcased at the event what did they use for that video footage does that still exist how many copies of this rom even existed in the first place were there multiple cartridges made of it just one and if someone else does have a copy why hasn't it been released yet it's never entirely impossible it'll show up somehow but the odds are stacked against this one and yet just like sonic 2 every time i see a bootleg copy of sonic 1 floating around a part of me wonders just maybe it could contain something special perhaps not even the demo maybe some bootlegger got a hold of a different early build of the game however here's another thing sonic 2's simon y build was only stolen from that toy fair because there was such a huge demand for sonic at the time but when this demo was shown off the series was new there was excitement for it but why would anyone try to get an early copy of it besides the people involved no one truly cared about the series until it came out and as such there wasn't even much to cover about the game besides hey this is sega's new game hopefully it's good that's probably why there isn't even any video footage of this it's insanely unlikely this build will ever come to light but that hope will always be there each year each decade that passes by the possibility of it being found feels more and more unobtainable but hey crazier discoveries have happened in the past perhaps one day dreams will come true one of the most iconic games of all time and naturally has one of the most iconic pre-releases of course i'm talking about super mario 64. considering how revolutionary this game was we can only imagine how intense its development was thankfully a lot of details about it have come to light most famously luigi was planned to be a second player controlled character in mario 64. the plan 2 player mode was one of the first things implemented too but unfortunately he didn't make the cut this sprung decades of speculation as to where luigi was in mario 64. in actuality he's not present anywhere in the data of the final game but thanks to the well-known 2020 leak of nintendo assets which contained a copy of the game's source code an official scrapped luigi model with textures was found these source files include stuff not included in the final game which is why luigi couldn't be found in the final builds files he simply wasn't compiled as he was unused but it is true that he was made for use in the game at one point what's really shocking is that these leaks came to light in july of 2020 24 years and one month after the game was released in japan in one of the most wonderful heartwarming twists of all time l was indeed real 2401 also found the source code it seems the working title of the game was ultra 64 mario brothers brothers huh luigi really was meant to want to play a really important role in the game also thanks to these leaks we know the game officially entered development on september 7th 1994. it's been said that luigi was removed from the game around february of 1996 showing how late he was cut it makes complete sense that a full model would exist and it does and it's beautiful unfortunately these source files are traced to the iq chinese version of mario 64. and as such they're dated 2003 so we don't have any mario 64 data prior to iq's involvement these early assets are simply leftovers that nintendo supplied iq along with everything else needed for the game what this means is that despite these leaks having a lot of early assets like levels enemies and of course the amazing luigi model it doesn't have everything we still don't have the actual demos and builds of the game as they were shown in pre-release media also i feel i should say this it's unclear how all this data leaked i imagine the methods used weren't exactly legal while there's a lot of really cool unavoidable stuff like luigi for this video i'd rather focus on official pre-release media from nintendo themselves though it's awesome this info has been released at least this shows that nintendo clearly keeps great backups of their data unlike some other companies back before the days of e3 nintendo showcased mario 64 at their own trade show show shinkai 1995. shinkai was an event that ran from 1989 to 1996. before being renamed to nintendo's space world in 1997 in 2001 nintendo abandoned their own trade show and started showcasing at e3 but before all that mario 64 and the finalized look of the nintendo 64 were unveiled at show shinkai 95 and there was even a playable demo at the event before this event nintendo filed some patents in relation to the 64. included were these very eerie looking screenshots of peach's castle obviously from a very early point of development sometimes these early screenshots can honestly look kinda creepy for the 1995 demo the game was said to be about 50 complete at this point and it shows there's early textures ui peach's castle had a completely different layout at this point even mario's voice was different these clips are actually samples taken from the best service voice spectral and the warner brothers sound effect libraries that's why certain lines sound completely different than others it's likely these were always meant to be placeholders until the final voice clips were finished i absolutely love this early art style of mario 64. everything is so vibrant and colorful you can really see how primitive it is [Music] the show shinkai 95 demo of mario 64 has unfortunately never surfaced nor have any early builds of the game meaning footage like this is all we have to go off of there's a lot of pre-release footage of the game out there but what else could be hiding in these early versions there's always this feeling of sadness looking at these long lost builds of games knowing you may never get to play them people care deeply about these games especially ones like mario 64. the idea of having access to extra material like early content is incredibly enticing obviously it's irrational to think that any company would release every single piece of content made for their game but i think there's something to be said in regards to getting these once public demos re-released if the company still has access to it that is stuff like the 1995 mario 64 demo was tested and made ready for public play and yet if you didn't attend that event you can't play it hopefully that isn't the case forever as time goes on demand for these early builds only grows larger there is so much speculation as to what else could be hiding in here if what we've seen looks so different imagine what else could be found will we ever find a build of mario 64 with luigi still playable though while it would be awesome to see these builds in full someday it is fun to speculate who knows perhaps wario is hiding in the files of this demo there is no real evidence pointing towards it but there's just as much pointing against it though the genuine demo has yet to surface fans have come together to modify the game back into what it used to look like a lot of the footage you may find online is probably from these fan mods and not the real thing but that shows how accurate they are it's honestly unbelievable how far mario 64 modifications have come the game is understood inside and out the only thing left for fans to dig through would be early builds of the game and as unlikely as it may seem at this point i'd say just give it time nintendo clearly has really deep archives so perhaps someday we'll be able to explore these early castle walls before mario 64 super mario world also changed radically during development the game entered development sometime around 1987 and being one of the first super nintendo games production was full of hurdles what you're seeing is the fabled 1989 build of super mario world which is yet another white whale of game preservation many screenshots of it exist all showing a very different game but very little of it survives outside of that the title screen here is completely different showing a map of a mushroom-shaped island not seen in the final game the logo is pretty close to the japanese logo of the game only being fully blue similar to the mario 3 logo these early screenshots come from magazines that previewed the game well before release in this magazine the game is referred to as super mario brothers 4. the overworld shows a better look at that mushroom island using a completely different layout than seen in the final game many of the in-game graphics at this point resemble that of mario 3. raccoon mario and the super leaf are even present in some of these screenshots this power-up isn't in the final game as it was probably replaced by cape mario look at how different mario looks here especially small mario thanks to the same nintendo leaks that gave us that luigi model we have these early sprites in full as well as much more from mario world's development however these leaks weren't the first time those early mario sprites were found many early super mario world sprites can be found in official super nintendo test cartridges such as the snes test program as well as the snsp agent cassette curiously the aging cassette features a seemingly unlicensed version of the disney song when you wish upon a star sure this was never a commercially available product and was only ever used for testing purposes but why did they pick this song i mean fox was sued over a parody of the song appearing in family guy so i'm sure this would have turned some heads if it was public knowledge back when nintendo was using these programs but anyway here's a look at an early sprite sheet from around the time of this build originating from an official nintendo interview from 2017 done to promote the super nintendo classic this is how yoshi looked at this point of development and are those baby yoshis if you think that early spreadsheet of yoshi is weird some of the even earlier ones once again from that nintendo leak show an even more primitive reptilian look it appears the art style of this game once played more into it being on a prehistoric island while they might look weird those early yoshi sprites do look pretty similar to that famous sketch drawn by miyamoto during the days of the original super mario brothers pretty cool unfortunately officially at least the best look we have at the early versions of super mario world is press materials such as these screenshots but they're so interesting and just like mario 64 a remake of the 1985 build has been made by fans though it would be incredible to get the real thing given how much info has been uncovered over the years though it's certainly possible [Music] now this one is a very interesting story action 52 is an unlicensed multi-card release for the nintendo entertainment system in 1991. as the name suggests it includes 52 games but they're all of shockingly low quality and the game is regarded as one of the worst gaming items ever released the games included range from extremely buggy and unfair to unplayable its development has always been a bit of a mystery the game was developed by a company named active enterprises and the head of the company vince perry stumbled across one of the many illegal multi carts made back in the nes and famicom's heyday this one apparently had 40 games packed onto one cartridge these multi carts were pretty common back in the 80s and 90s and apparently that cartridge really inspired perry and so he had the idea of creating a cartridge just like this one but with original games making it you know legal and so the company began developing action 52 with a whopping 4 developers investors from around the world and extreme crunch time the game was thrusted into existence and released without nintendo's approval the games included were so bad there was no way they'd make it past nintendo's seal of quality so much for making an official multicart sidenote after the game was released no one's been able to actually find vince perry though people have tried action 52 is one of the biggest bombs of the era so people have tried to find the guy behind it to get more info about its creation as it turns out the guy's a complete mystery and all leads and fruitless it's honestly kinda creepy you gotta wonder what happened to the guy to make this all even more ridiculous as shown on the box the suggested retail price was 199 united states dollars with inflation that's over 350 today plans to make action 52 the next big thing were underway the developers really thought this was going to be a huge hit there was even a sega genesis version released in 1993 the flagship title of action 52 was none other than the cheetah men a side-scrolling game that started the trio of cheetah men who active seriously hoped would become the next tmnt they prepared toys comics and more all based off of this really bad game unfortunately these guys wouldn't even be contenders for the next street sharks and the game was a huge failure but it did get an official animated commercial that aired on tv [Music] i said here chap shouldn't you go on a diet are you talking to me hmm maybe these guys would make these holes bigger i could fit easier you know what i'm saying hey man i'll help you out no worries no action 52 is an absolutely crazy tale on its own but there's more to its legacy than just the initial release before the game had proven itself to be a colossal failure development on a cheetah man 2 sequel had begun the game was cancelled and was never released but in 1996 a warehouse full of copies of the game was found it's believed that 1 500 copies of the game were produced who knows how many still exist today though these cartridges were actually repurposed to likely unsold copies of action 52 the two games are identical apart from cheetah 2 having this small golden label since the game was very unfinished it's unknown why these cartridges were produced but given the low amount made and the absolutely crazy story behind them they've become extremely rare collector's items copies of action 52 are already hard to find but this one truly makes for a collection centerpiece as weird as it is but neither of these games are as hard to find as the man behind it all but maybe this is one mystery best left to rest surely heard of prototypes of unreleased games but how about prototypes of unreleased versions of games in the mid-90s a bootleg sega genesis street fighter 2 cartridge began showing up in various international markets while capcom released their own official port for the system in the form of street fighter 2 special champion edition this bootleg version was unique this so-called turbo bootleg is a shockingly good port of street fighter 2 champion edition so what was going on here how was this fake version so good and not just in other world heroes too well here's what happened capcom's street fighter 2 the world warrior ranks among the most ported games of all time and following its incredibly successful 1991 arcade release fans were eager to play the game at home given their history nintendo and capcom were very close when street fighter became huge so a super nintendo port was swiftly made and released worldwide across 1992 nintendo even made an exclusivity deal with capcom meaning the game couldn't be released anywhere but the super nintendo this poor was developed by capcom in house and is of very good quality it would go on to sell 6.3 million units making it one of the super nintendo's most popular games but following its home console debut fans wondered if sega would be getting any street fighter love of their own despite nintendo and capcom's deal around the summer of 1992 sega were able to work out their own deal see in march of 1992 capcom released street fighter 2 champion edition technically this was a different arcade release making it a different game allowing for a sega port to be created at the time capcom was unfamiliar with sega's hardware so the port was outsourced to a third-party company much like their other sega releases after the deal was made the two companies were very secretive in regards to street fighter 2 coming to the genesis rumors were flying about a port being foreign development releasing soon in 1992 even some rumors of a sega cd port being made appeared as well but the game wouldn't be officially announced until march 10th 1993 when sega of america and capcom usa held a press conference officially announcing their partnership there they announced that street fighter 2 champion edition would be released for the sega genesis in june of 1993 alongside a new six button controller perfect for fighting games prototypes of the genesis port were available at the press conference showing the game was already pretty far in development journalists at the event praised the port and magazines reported it was already close to 80 complete and was of great quality despite a few faults such as these black bars that show at the top of gameplay which weren't present in the super nintendo version however also in 1993 capcom announced street fighter 2 turbo hyper fighting another revision beyond champion edition which was already set for a release on the super nintendo this version was set to release in july of 1993 shortly after sega's now inferior version was set to come out turbo was to include all the bonuses of champion edition along with faster gameplay which became highly requested after the circulation of street fighter 2 rainbow edition a bootleg modification of the original arcade release which became popular thanks to its faster speed and crazy new moves that's a completely different story though point is nintendo was already going to get another better version so sega had some catching up to do to make things way worse shortly after it was publicly announced capcom of japan weren't very happy with how this outsourced port for the genesis was coming out capcom usa were willing to polish up this version and get it released but capcom of japan decided to pull the plug on it restart and make it themselves leading to street fighter 2 special champion edition a version of champion edition with features similar to turbo which was released for the sega mega drive in genesis in 1993. this was a mess sega were eager to get a port of one of the hottest games in the world but even after securing a port capcom announces an even better version being made for nintendo's system and they also scrapped all the work that had been done on the genesis port to that point though it was delayed special champion edition released in september of 1993 and was a decent success but the mystery regarding that original port continued before being cancelled the original port had a considerable amount of work done on it so much so that as mentioned magazines already began promoting it and even reviewing it showing lots of screenshots and details from this version of the game some magazines even confused it for the new special champion edition there was promotional video footage of it that was released there was even box art made for it too all for it to just never come out but while it was never officially released on june 2nd 1994 a curious street fighter 2 mega drive rom appeared online supplied by the rom dumper group the boss this case appears to be very similar to how the simon y sonic 2 build came to circulation through a pirated cartridge here's a look at the title screen clearly showing its bootleg origin but the rest of the game was surprisingly faithful this bootleg of street fighter 2 turbo was a mystery for years how was it so good it seemed totally original not being a hack of any other existing fighting game for the system of course this is because this is a modified version of that cancelled champion edition for years whether or not this bootleg had ties to that cancelled version was debated why was the title screen different there are differences between the magazine screenshots and this bootleg it must just be a really accurate fake yes this bootleg isn't identical to the ones shown in early promo material those black bars are nowhere to be seen but it's very similar it's almost certain that this bootleg comes from that port's latest point of development before capcom of japan stepped in and decided to do it themselves the graphics and many gameplay features line up very closely with the original advertised version however their connection wouldn't be conclusively confirmed until much later when two prototypes of the original version were found and dumped by the people at hidden palace included with those roms is an incredible write-up detailing this version of the game as well as solid proof that the turbo bootleg is connected to this version it'll likely always remain a mystery as to how that bootleg copy came into circulation and even with the genuine prototypes now being available we'll probably never know for sure but this goes to show that you never know where a prototype could show up [Music] sometimes the games you least expect have the most interesting development would you believe me if i told you that spongebob squarepants super sponge is one of the most chronicled games out there despite being a pretty unremarkable licensed game it has a shocking amount of documentation available online due to files from the entire development cycle being leaked the company that developed this game climax studios closed some of its branches in 2008 and the assets from those branches were sold off included were these two backup desks which included oh you know every single asset ever made for super sponge these discs have since been posted online and include everything ever made related to the game even actual show assets sent by nickelodeon as references to the game's developers were all found of course there were also many prototype builds this goes for both the playstation and game boy advanced versions of the game we'll start with the playstation games intro in the earliest build of the game the intro is just the show's actual intro the one from the june 2001 build gets cut off early but features different clips from the show the july builds intro is definitely the best featuring funky title cards and misspelled character names spongebob's name is misspelled and mr krabs is referred to as krusty krab this was all cleaned up for the final releases intro early builds of the playstation version feature 3d models for most of the characters i can't imagine why they would change these the voice acting also wasn't done at this point so some early builds have placeholder audio instead it's my best friend patrick's birthday and a signed photo of his favorite superheroes would be the best thing ever it's my best friend patrick's birthday and a signed photo of his favorite superheroes would be the best thing ever other things of interest in these early builds include sketches used for placeholder art unused levels and characters that were cut from the game the game's source code features assets from the show including backgrounds and episode scripts there are also these character model sheets it's crazy to think all this came from super sponge literally anything ever used in relation to this game is backed up online however fair warning contained in these source files are some shockingly inappropriate pieces of artwork as well as files titled by someone with a real sailor's mouth it's pretty clear that some of the people at climax weren't totally on board with making this game their name's pretty fitting though the game boy advanced versions early builds are also quite interesting what you're looking at is a bill dated november 28 2000 it looks nothing like the final game but also looks pretty impressive for being such an early gba project for reference this is what the final game looked like check out this one that tests some wacky graphical effects this one's from january 8 2001 apart from the many builds and concept art there are also some documents that detail how the team wanted the game to play some that directly reference other games like yoshi's island there's even one titled spongebob list that details everything wrong with the game that needs fixing the files also contain emulators and roms of these games in case the team needed to reference them while developing so yeah if you're interested in prototypes i absolutely recommend checking out what's available for spongebob super sponge there is some wild stuff and there you have it a look at various mind-boggling video game prototypes and early builds whether they're totally lost or extensively archived these game prototypes will always be some of the most interesting things to me it's like we never know what'll be archived next it's so great that even decades out of a game's release you never know when or how new info about the game will come out we're honestly very lucky for this it's hard enough preserving some released games preserving their early content is a completely different story but it's important it's what keeps the preservationist hobby alive that hope that one day you're on earth the next big find this content gives each game even more to discuss beyond the game itself and it gives great insight into game development as a whole just look at how some of these games changed over time this is very inspiring stuff to those who want to get into the industry someday but as great as it is it's so defeating when you've seen screenshots of some of these for years well decades for some of them but know it's incredibly unlikely you'll ever get to experience them one day we'll find that tokyo toy show demo of sonic 1. there's no way it's actually gone forever it must be out there somewhere this goes for more recent games too even though early builds for them aren't as common i still hope that someday we'll be able to preserve stuff like the e3 2006 demo of super mario galaxy from the mega man x white city build to the early versions of super smash bros to so so so so so much more the mystery of game prototypes will live on forever it's impossible to save everything but we can hope that game developers are taking the measures needed to archive these important pieces of gaming history [Music] you

Channel: PatMac

Views: 330,334

Rating: 4.9467864 out of 5

Keywords: Video Games, Prototypes, Sonic The Hedgehog, Mario, SpongeBob Squarepants, Games, Gaming, History, Gaming History, The History of, Game Development, Beta, Alpha, Funny, Evolution, Development History, Luigi, Super Mario Bros., Kirby, Mega Man, SpongeBob, Nintendo, SEGA, Capcom, Street Fighter 2, Cheetahmen, Bootleg, Bootleg Game, Action 52, Unseen, Unreleased, Rare

Id: 8c6cizeXXYM

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020