10 Video Game Cuts Made For RIDICULOUS Reasons
Crash Bandicoot's Stormy Ascent was cut for being "too hard." Get outta here.
There's no underestimating the headache-inducing complexity of video game development, where hundreds of artists and programmers must collaborate while working towards a vision which isn't always fully solidified until the very end of production.
Cuts and editing are a natural part of any creative process, though it's often especially painstaking in gaming because of the sheer number of man hours that can be poured into even a relatively minor aspect.
This is especially true given that cuts are often made for absurd, illogical, and downright infuriating reasons.
Though everyone can understand why Hideo Kojima cut a sequence from Metal Gear Solid 2 where Arsenal Gear crashes into Manhattan - the game releasing two months after 9/11 and all - these 10 games all made far more contentious edits.
All of this content, from extra characters to additional levels, new enemies, and even the actual ending, were cut during production for reasons which continue to baffle players.
In rare cases the excised material might be released later or made available in a remake or remaster, but sadly they're largely destined to be remembered as nagging "what if?"s of gaming history...
10. The NBA Asked Midway To Remove Playable Mortal Kombat Characters - NBA Jam: Tournament Edition
The earliest arcade editions of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition saw developers Midway include characters from their ultra-violent beat 'em up series Mortal Kombat, such as Raiden, Reptile, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero.
But it didn't take long for the NBA to learn of this and request that the four characters - along with other extra players such as the Grim Reaper and King Kong - be removed from the game.
It seems that the NBA didn't have much of a sense of humour where their brand was concerned, preferring not to have their lucrative players associated with fictional characters who rip out spines for fun.
And so Midway, understandably unwilling to throw away a coveted NBA contract or perhaps even risk a lawsuit, had no choice but to comply, not only removing the characters from all subsequent console ports but even updating every arcade cabinet out in the wild.
As a result, the characters can only be accessed today through playing an emulated version of the original arcade game, or being one of the precious few to own an unoriginal, unmodified arcade cabinet.
Though it goes without saying that Mortal Kombat was extremely controversial in the mid '90s, the NBA's humourless approach here was a total overstep.