The Cutting Room Floor (website)

The Cutting Room Floor (TCRF) is a website dedicated to the cataloguing of unused content and leftover debugging material in video games. The site and its discoveries have been referenced in the gaming press.

The Cutting Room Floor
Type of site
Wiki
Founder(s)Robert Flory
Key peopleXkeeper[1]
URLtcrf.net
Launched2002 (2002) (original form)
2 February 2010 (2010-02-02) (current form)
Content licence
CC BY 3.0

The site started out as part of a blog but was reworked and relaunched as a wiki in 2010. The reworked site is considered by Edge to be a major catalogue of unused video game content.

History

The Cutting Room Floor was started by Robert Flory in 2002 as part of a blog.[1] It mainly focused on Nintendo Entertainment System games[2] and was occasionally updated.[1] In the late 2000s, Alex Workman, better known as Xkeeper, reworked the site into a wiki, which launched on 2 February 2010.[2] The site has since specialised (Kotaku described them as "routinely responsible" for it[3]) in what gaming media (including Edge) have likened to video game archaeology:[1][4][5][6][7] its members analyse video game code and content using various tools (such as debuggers and hex editors[1]) and if something interesting is found, an "uncover" starts.[4] According to Xkeeper, the site's members co-operatively analyse their findings to work out how to re-enable content.[4] The site's goal is to catalogue "as many deleted elements as possible from all sorts of games".[8]

In December 2013, Edge considered The Cutting Room Floor to be the largest and best-organised catalogue of unused video game content.[1] Around this time, the site had 3712 articles.[1] In June 2016, Xkeeper said that the website has largely avoided copyright issues.[4]

Amongst the more noted discoveries are the secret menus in the Mortal Kombat games,[3][9][10] and The Legend of Zelda prototype (which was "extensively" catalogued and a The Cutting Room Floor moderator GoldS considers the site's most important article[11][1]).[4] The Cutting Room Floor's community are reported to have paid 700 dollars for an unreleased Nintendo DS Tetris prototype.[4] A coding error in Super Mario Bros. that changed the behaviour of the Spiny eggs also made the gaming press.[12] In May 2018, Kotaku and Eurogamer reported on a Pokémon Gold and Silver prototype and its assets that had been discovered and documented on the website.[13][14]

Other material catalogued include hidden messages[5] and regional and revisional differences (differences between versions and ports).[15]

See also

References
  1. "The Explorers: The gaming archaeologists digging through the code you were never meant to see". Edge. 16 December 2013. Archived from the original on 18 February 2014. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  2. "The Cutting Room Floor:About". The Cutting Room Floor. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  3. Yarwood, Jack (29 March 2016). "The People Obsessed With Uncovering Gaming's Deepest, Darkest Secrets". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  4. Smith, Ernie (16 June 2016). "A Link to the Past: Unused Content in Video Games". Tedium. Archived from the original on 8 July 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  5. Kemps, Heidi (May 2013). "The Funny, Occasionally Dirty, Hidden Messages in Your Favorite Games". Wired. Archived from the original on 15 February 2016. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  6. Peterson, Joel (10 August 2017). "Hackers uncover long lost Super Mario Bros. 2 enemy". Destructoid. Archived from the original on 30 October 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  7. Wilson, Mike (3 December 2017). "Check Out This Unused 'Bloodborne' Content!". Bloody Disgusting. Archived from the original on 20 July 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  8. Channell, Mike (31 December 2013). "Discover The Deleted Scenes From Your Favourite Games". Outside Xbox. Archived from the original on 5 January 2014. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  9. Orland, Kyle (24 February 2016). "Decades later, players are still unlocking secrets in classic Mortal Kombat". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  10. Paget, Mat (25 February 2016). "Mortal Kombat's Secret Menus Discovered 20 Years Later". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  11. McWhertor, Michael (27 December 2010). "A Rare Look At What The Legend of Zelda Used To Be". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 11 March 2020. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  12. Theriault, Donald (24 April 2016). "New Error Found In Super Mario Bros". Nintendo World Report. Archived from the original on 30 July 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  13. Jackson, Gita (31 May 2018). "Old Pokémon Gold And Silver Demo Shows Features That Never Made It". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 1 June 2018. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  14. Phillips, Tom (31 May 2018). "20 years later, fans uncover never-before-seen Pokémon left on the cutting room floor". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  15. Ben Stegner, Ben (30 May 2014). "4 Useful and Interesting Video Game Websites You've Never Heard Of". MakeUseOf. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
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