Gaming The System: The hidden world of the Cutting Room Floor
As with movies, a lot of interesting
little tidbits get left on the
proverbial cutting room floor with
video games. However, most of this
excised content can still be accessed
buried deep within the recesses of
data, with the hierarchical nature
of programming making complete
deletion a domino effect that harms
other, valid code.
Some bits, such as Goldeneye 64’s hidden levels and “All Bonds” multiplayer mode have already made Internet legend, however, there’s still hundreds of well-loved titles with hidden content only found by the most dedicated of nerds. And all those buried treasures are compiled together in one, giant, easy-to-read Wikipedia page.
These are some choice bits brought to you by tcrf.net (tcrf.net/ The_Cutting_Room_Floor), the Cutting Room Floor wiki.
David Pridie’s New Tetris rants
The ‘90s were thick with re-releases and updates to arcade classics like Pac-Man, and Tetris was no exception with New Tetris on the Nintendo 64. Three days after the game’s release, ROM-dumpers (pirates who cracked apart games and uploaded them online) unearthed the rants of a code-monkey named David Pridie hidden within the programming. They are an absolute blast to read, from his pot-shots at his idiot supervisor (“You should go back to testing video games, but I doubt you could even manage that properly”) to a giant list of his petpeeves (“Cheap a$$ manufacturers of DVDs who list as “features” chapters, interactive menus [sic], and the time. These aren’t features. That’s like calling your computer’s keyboard a “feature”) being worthy of any hack comedian’s bits. Although Pridie unfortunately passed away a few years after the game’s release, his legacy lives on through his coffee-and-donut fueled rants.
PachiCom’s Tale of Woes
In the vein of hidden rants, PachiCom’s programmer really, really hates his job. The standard “I hate my boss and here’s why” spiel aside, the programmer, Y.S, also left quite a few abusive messages directed at his fellow programmers chiding them for their incompetence.
Dave Staugas loves Beatrice Hablig
This digital “I love you” tree bark carving can be found on the millions of copies of Millipede for the Atari 2600.
From rants, to unfinished items, and plain “screw off, code hackers!” there’s a cornucopia of hidden junk in video games that the most dedicated players have found. TCRF is quite the place to get lost in if you not only love video games, but the process, and the people, behind them.
Some bits, such as Goldeneye 64’s hidden levels and “All Bonds” multiplayer mode have already made Internet legend, however, there’s still hundreds of well-loved titles with hidden content only found by the most dedicated of nerds. And all those buried treasures are compiled together in one, giant, easy-to-read Wikipedia page.
These are some choice bits brought to you by tcrf.net (tcrf.net/ The_Cutting_Room_Floor), the Cutting Room Floor wiki.
David Pridie’s New Tetris rants
The ‘90s were thick with re-releases and updates to arcade classics like Pac-Man, and Tetris was no exception with New Tetris on the Nintendo 64. Three days after the game’s release, ROM-dumpers (pirates who cracked apart games and uploaded them online) unearthed the rants of a code-monkey named David Pridie hidden within the programming. They are an absolute blast to read, from his pot-shots at his idiot supervisor (“You should go back to testing video games, but I doubt you could even manage that properly”) to a giant list of his petpeeves (“Cheap a$$ manufacturers of DVDs who list as “features” chapters, interactive menus [sic], and the time. These aren’t features. That’s like calling your computer’s keyboard a “feature”) being worthy of any hack comedian’s bits. Although Pridie unfortunately passed away a few years after the game’s release, his legacy lives on through his coffee-and-donut fueled rants.
PachiCom’s Tale of Woes
In the vein of hidden rants, PachiCom’s programmer really, really hates his job. The standard “I hate my boss and here’s why” spiel aside, the programmer, Y.S, also left quite a few abusive messages directed at his fellow programmers chiding them for their incompetence.
Dave Staugas loves Beatrice Hablig
This digital “I love you” tree bark carving can be found on the millions of copies of Millipede for the Atari 2600.
From rants, to unfinished items, and plain “screw off, code hackers!” there’s a cornucopia of hidden junk in video games that the most dedicated players have found. TCRF is quite the place to get lost in if you not only love video games, but the process, and the people, behind them.
