The Cutting Room Floor/ME-tan's World: The Prequel

ME-tan's World: The Prequel was an attempt to rival against GBA and N64 games... by releasing it on a dying system. Yup, that's right! They made a game for the Super Famicom in 2003. After two attemps, they did finish it.

It was based on that image posted on Futaba Channel 6 days before the game's release, and the guy who made it requested Futaba Games to do games based on her, so they did, spanning tons and tons of shovelware spin-offs for that same system, and some of them are developed by third-parties (a notable example being ME-tan no Kyouiku, which was developed by C.O.V.I.D., a company known for developing and publishing Neko-chan).

And when they released it, the SNES was already dead in the US and Europe, so it was lost in localization... until it was finally averted with its Wii Virtual Console release, even being available in English. A GBA port was also made, which did get a worldwide release not so long after.

It somehow managed to push the SNES to its limits, weighting 48 megabits in size and having some impressive graphics. Despite this, its soundtrack is rather mediocre, having some A Dog's Room vibes.

Developer joke
Present in the game's data is this strange text about a robot that is mistaken for... a booty?

According to an interview, this is confirmed to be a joke put in by the developers, in order to do some rather obscene puns.

Kirby 4 leftovers
Some leftovers from its (cancelled) Famicom counterpart are still found in the files of the (finished) Super Famicom version.

Back when there's no prototype of the game, the presence of this text was a mystery, and was the only proof of the fact that it started out as a Kirby game. When the interviews came out, the mystery has been partially resolved, but was later fully resolved with the prototype getting leaked.

Doraemon rivalry
Present in the files of the game is some text regarding rivarly against the popular Japanese manga character Doraemon. This text is simple, being a hate message to Doraemon.

Interestingly, the English version from the Wii Virtual Console translated it to a message, stating that the localizers doesn't know what it means, due to Doraemon not existing in the US at the time. Due to it using the Japanese first person pronoun "mī", it could be spoken by ME-tan herself, due to her use of that pronoun.

Concept artwork


Present in the files is a recreation of the concept artwork drawn for its Famicom prototype, with some poorly written kana and kanji, alongside the initials for Gaming Game and HAL Laboratory.

Just like the unused text, the presence of this image was a mystery back when there's no prototype of the game.

Yoshitake Yumezumi


Present in the game's files is a poorly-drawn image of Yoshitake Yumezumi, the game's producer. Interestingly enough, the word "Yoshitake" was written in hiragana (よしたけ), rather than kanji (吉竹).

This isn't technically unused, since it appeared on the first version of the game. It was removed in the first revision, despite the photo still being left in the game's files.

Doraemon rivalry


Another piece of Doraemon rivalry, being a poorly drawn image of ME-tan hitting Doraemon with a leek, alongside text that read "No more Doraemon".

While it isn't technically unused, it only shows for a single frame upon booting up the game for the first time (with the flag being present in SRAM), and even then, it is very dark, to the point where it looks like a pure black screen, so the image provided here has been restored to its full glory.

Ironically, Yoshitake Yumezumi, the game's creator, is a Doraemon fan, even working on a lot of Doraemon games at Fujiotto.

Gallery placeholder


The game has a placeholder picutre that shows up when an undefined image is used in the gallery via hacking.

Ironically enough, this one does feature Doraemon! That Doraemon picture was also used on the old Doraemon website since 2001 when it got moved to a new domain. Back then (even during the game's release), the 1979 Doraemon anime is still running, so the artwork used here features an early design for him.