You've finally done it. You've written your 1200-page game bible, describing all 150 painstakingly detailed levels, 20 different boss fights, and an overarching plot that spans generations. Now comes the part where you actually, y'know, make it. You've got two years to do so, and your publisher's last 'sure-fire' project just got sent through the critical meat grinder, so your budget's been chopped in half. Aaaaaand half of your top-level staff has quit in frustration. Hope you're not married to that hours-long multi-path ending you were planning on implementing.

There are lots of reasons certain scenes get cut, whether it's due to a lack of time, hardware constraints, or the developers simply biting off more than they can chew. Sometimes, the cuts go unnoticed, and the rest of the game goes on without a hitch. Some other games don’t cut enough, continuing to clumsily refer to these now non-existent events, leaving you wondering just what the hell everyone is talking about. And a surprising amount of these cuts are very much last-minute changes, as evidenced by their content’s persisting but locked-off presence on the final retail disc. It’s a weird old mix of stuff, alright. Ever wondered what could have been? Check out these seven amazing scenes that were cut from your favorite video games.

The Ghostbusters game is famous for two things: letting players act out their favorite moments from the classic films and also for not sucking like nearly every other licensed video game. It's pure fanservice, letting you run amok in a hotel, library, sewers, and more, generally destroying everything in sight on your quest to bust as many ghosts as possible. One particular scene was supposed to take you through the streets of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, but was inexplicably cut.

As you can see from , the level design and crowd AI were both in place, and if you go digging around on the disc, you'll even find some cutscenes that were supposed to take place during this parade. Had the level been included, you would have captured ghosts while riding on a float as huge balloons filled the sky. In the final game, the mayor even makes specific reference to how the Ghostbusters have wrecked "his library, museum, and parade," despite the parade never actually making it in. It's a shame, because this level sounds awesome.

Saints Row: The Third's story, while full of hilarious sequences and lots and lots of crotch punching, feels a bit lacking, and some details from the actually shed some light on as to why. According to the guide, there were several different drafts and details that changed over the course of development. At one point, Johnny Gat was supposed to be captured instead of killed, characters like Viola and Kiki would have joined the Saints, and Shaundi was actually supposed to be off gallivanting on a reality show in Mexico.

But the best scene that was left on the editing room floor? After the bridge to Stilwater is destroyed, there was supposed to be a cutscene featuring a -style song routine as the Saints attempt to raise money to rebuild the city. I'm actually a bit saddened now, knowing that this was supposed to exist. It would have been hilarious.

A playthrough of Shadow of the Colossus will take an average player anywhere from 8-10 hours. Not too shabby for a game based solely around traversing a barren landscape filled with 16 boss fights. Now imagine that total time nearly tripled, as developer Fumito Uedo originally envisioned as many as 48 colossi available to conquer.

Realizing that 48 hulking beasts was probably a bit too much for the PlayStation 2 to handle, Ueda cut the roster down to a more manageable 24. due to budget constraints and other limitations, with their only existence confirmed by their presence in the game's artbook. Among the cut colossi are a massive daddy longlegs, a phoenix, a griffon, and even a monkey. While those seem interesting enough, I'm actually even more curious about the other 24 colossi that were planned. The sheer number of them would have lead to some absolutely bonkers concepts, most of them completely unlike the 16 we actually got.

Between fighting space pirates, battling those annoying metroids, and otherwise coping with the deadly flora and fauna of Tallon IV, Samus certainly has her hands full during her first 3D outing. Hell, she even comes across a cyborg version of perpetual thorn-in-her-side Ridley, who attacks her during the penultimate boss fight. But Ridley wasn't supposed to be the only major villain making their GameCube debut. If things had gone to plan, Samus would have come across a giant, three-dimensional version of Super Metroid's Kraid.

Referred to as by fans, this overweight lizard was modelled, textured, and intended to be used as a boss fight in the Phazon Mines on Tallon IV. A large portion of his level was prototyped and implemented, but would have delayed Metroid Prime's release date. Unfortunately, he was deemed 'unimportant' to the overall experience, and thus got the axe. Maybe he'll finally get his due in a high-definition sequel? Fingers crossed.

is a long time to wait for any game, let alone for the highly anticipated followup to instant classic BioShock. And a lot can change over five years, as different modes and areas are created because they sound cool and dropped when they don't work. If you compare the BioShock Infinite we got in 2013 to the preview trailers shown in the years leading up to release, you can see some pretty spectacular moments that never actually made it into the final release.

In this from 2010, Booker's companion Elizabeth seems to have way more power at her disposal than she does in the actual 2013 release. She's not only opening tears to hidden weapon caches, but she's also summoning rain clouds for him to use as a conductor for his electricity hands. There's even an exciting and protracted bridge battle, complete with dramatic appearance by the intimidating Songbird - all of which was cut from the final game. While this trailer is likely more proof-of-concept than actual gameplay, it's still intriguing that many of the ideas and locations shown off prior to release were either changed or removed completely.

If you've played Metal Gear Solid 2, you've probably noticed that the lead-up to the final boss feels a bit… truncated. Raiden goes from standing on top of Arsenal Gear in the middle of the ocean to battling Solidus on top of a ruined building in New York City within a few awkward edits. So what happened?

Well, there was supposed to be a lengthy sequence showing Arsenal Gear smashing its way through the New York skyline, knocking into the Statue of Liberty (which would wind up on Ellis Island after the dust settled). All told, the out-of-control Gear should have crushed half of Manhattan, but all of it was cut in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. While it's a shame that the removal caused such a jarring disconnect between the aforementioned scenes, it would have been in incredibly poor taste if Metal Gear Solid 2 had shipped with this scene intact, mere months after the attacks.

It's no secret that Knights of the Old Republic 2 shipped unfinished. Pushed up against a looming deadline, developer Obsidian had to make a hard decision and cut swaths of content just to get the game out the door. It hacked off reams of character interactions and dialog, removed locations like a droid production plant and an entire extra planet, and even cut large sections of the ending. The final product left players confused and incomplete. Something was obviously missing.

Thankfully, many of the related files were still included on the game's discs, despite not being accessible during the course of normal play. have since taken these files, prettied them up, and fitted them back into the main game, including that awesome sequence in the aforementioned droid factory. Bring that misanthropic HK-47 droid with you, and either save and recruit the robots found within, or blow them all up. And the ending? Well, there actually is one now. Finally; closure.

No one likes to cut their favorite feature or tear-jerking scene, but sometimes difficult decisions need to be made in the name of actually shipping a product. Luckily, many of these scenes get to live on thanks to rereleases and player-created mods. What are some of your favorite deleted scenes? Let me know in the comments!

Looking for more? Check out the .

In the olden days, your first time playing a game rated M for Mature was a big deal. Maybe it was the fact that, like getting your driver's permit or being able to vote, the power to buy a game deemed too bloody or scandalous for younger eyes felt like a true coming-of-age moment. Maybe your first M-rated game was like a secret hidden from your parents' prying eyes, or smuggled to you by a hip relative like clandestine tickets to an R-rated movie.

Now you've got all these kids getting Call of Duty as a present on their eighth birthday, or playing Five Nights at Freddy's and skipping those 'ESRB' or 'PEGI' things altogether. It's not like it's illegal for parents to buy age-inappropriate games for their children - but there was a time when booting up something M-rated as a youngster had a certain mystique about it, with the sense that you were suddenly ready for anything (except maybe those ). So, which gory, gratuitous experience ushered you into gaming adulthood?

It was wonderful fun growing up around the founding of the ESRB, because even though game ratings existed, parents didn't notice or particularly care about them yet. That's how my friends and I got our young hands on Perfect Dark at the tender age of 11. GoldenEye's weird cousin with a head for alien conspiracy theories, Perfect Dark made us feel like we were getting away with something every time we played it. You could blow people up, blood would splash across the wall whenever you shot a guy, and sometimes enemies would call you a bitch as they went down. Everything a pre-teen could want.

But what really made Perfect Dark great was the multiplayer mode. Sure, it was just a bunch of blocky maps where you could play King of the Hill or shoot up mooks, but that was only part of the draw. What we loved was being our own little army, eliciting shrieks of AI terror and spraying the walls with gore, crushing those who would oppose us with the sort of chilling cruelty only a child can wield. That is, until we turned our digital guns on each other. Does anyone else hear child-like cackling on the wind?

Like all good things in a young boy's life, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis came by way of a cool older cousin. Violent games were forbidden in my household, so I dove into this one with ravenous curiosity. The blood. The guts. The gore. I wanted to see it all. RE3 was my glimpse into gaming's seedy underbelly. Then there was the Nemesis itself. Powerful and imposing, this unstoppable monster hounded my every step; its guttural cry of "STARS!" heralding my imminent doom.

Tragically, after a mere three days in Raccoon City, my parents put the kibosh on RE3. I was distraught. YouTube didn't exist yet, so how would I know if poor Jill made it out alive? That's when I found the novelization of RE3 at a local bookstore, which I secreted away under my mattress. I figured, 'My parents want me to read more, so even if they do find this, they can't get that mad, right?'

Let's see here... we've got a serial-killing clown, a dude who got his face mutilated during a botched surgery, a girl who has a porcelain mask nailed to her skull courtesy of an abusive father figure, and a Vietnam veteran turned cannibal. And that's just on the character select screen! The most iconic part of the car combat Twisted Metal series is its utterly deranged cast of psychotic misfits, but David Jaffe and co. went extra dark and disturbing for the PS2 installment.

My parents agreed to buy this horrifying concoction for my 13-year-old self based on one condition: I would skip all the potentially psyche-scarring cutscenes, meaning the only violence I would ever see would be car-on-car. I held up my end of the bargain (since I was too scared to watch anyway) - but I wasn't quite prepared for a stage set-piece that lets you fry death row inmates to a crisp, or Brimstone's special attack that launches a suicide-bombing zealot onto enemy vehicles. Let's just say my mom wasn't exactly pleased to see that kind of imagery on the family TV.

My older brother was always there to lead the charge, so I never had to worry much about getting M-rated games. As long as I kept it low-key, I could play pretty much any of his purchases without (voiced) concern from our parents. I never got in trouble at school for reenacting all that 'Animated Violence' and 'Animated Blood and Gore', so I guess it worked out ok.

Speaking of which, the only thing I vividly recall about the N64 Turok games is the blood. I doubt anything else about them is still remarkable (except maybe to virtual fog enthusiasts), but that blood was really something. It's even more impressive when you consider that Nintendo made Mortal Kombat fighters bleed frickin' Ecto Cooler just a few years before. But I digress: My first truly M-rated experience was throwing a razor-sharp Frisbee into Turok 2's giant eyeball boss so I could watch blood spurt as it bounced around inside the vitreous humor. Hooray for video games!

At least Connor got a chance to play his copy of Turok. See, I come from a pretty religious household (true story: My mom made me throw away some Magic: The Gathering cards I'd bought from a friend in middle school because the devil). So other than a quick round of Mortal Kombat or Doom at a friend's house, M-rated games were out of the question. But one day, when I was 13 or 14, I decided to press my luck and rent a copy of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I don't remember how it happened exactly, but somehow the game slipped past the watchful eye of my parents and the Blockbuster clerk well enough for me to take it home and play it.

For five whole minutes. I slapped the cartridge into my N64, booted up the tutorial, and began wandering through this foggy, dinosaur-filled realm. I took aim with my bow, and loosed an arrow toward an unsuspecting mook. Decapitation! And, because this is how these things go, this was the exact moment my dad walked in my room, shouted "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" and promptly grounded me for a week. I felt upset about it at the time, but I'm honestly kinda grateful. He saved me from a pretty terrible game.

I was in love with adventure games from the late '80s and early '90s, and the only reason I had access to them was because my dad had colleagues who would share their games. So in between playing King's Quest and Police Quest, my dad had also passed along Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards because he had no idea what it was about. Yeah, I know. I even helped Kickstart the remake a couple of years ago... and still haven't played it.

Parental controls weren’t really a thing with my parents, unless I was tying up the phone line (and he took my modem). So naive, clueless little me was walking around as this pervy guy in a white suit trying to hit on women. I kinda knew who he was since he made a cameo in Police Quest, but I didn't quite get the full picture until many years later. Many, many years later. Luckily for me (or maybe not), I couldn't figure out the puzzles and didn't get the jokes, so wandering around trying to kiss whoever showed up didn't really get me very far.

Had the ESRB actually existed when Mortal Kombat 2 launched, that would technically be my first, but instead the honor officially goes to Duke Nukem 3D. The FPS certainly earned its rating with gory violence, crude humor, and even some heavily pixelated nudity. Back in 1996, all of that had an intoxicating charm to me and my juvenile friends. It was such a thrill knowing my parents would disapprove of Duke Nukem saying “I'll rip your head off and shit down your neck,” let alone him literally doing that during the post-boss-fight cutscene.

Today, Duke’s reputation as gaming’s bad boy seems so quaint. His gory escapades look tame next to God of War, and his dirty attempts at wit can’t really compare to the colorful insults of Saints Row. Also, once I saw films like They Live, I realized all of Duke’s best lines weren’t even original. Nowadays, I'm mortified whenever I think about my seventh-grade self's excitement for Duke's breakout hit.

So, how about you? What was the first M-rated game you ever owned or played, and how did it all go down? Did you incur the wrath of your parents, or exploit their inattention to what you were actually playing? Or heck - maybe you were old enough to just buy it for yourself, no questions asked! Share in the comments below.

And if you're looking for more, check out other fun group features like

In the olden days, your first time playing a game rated M for Mature was a big deal. Maybe it was the fact that, like getting your driver's permit or being able to vote, the power to buy a game deemed too bloody or scandalous for younger eyes felt like a true coming-of-age moment. Maybe your first M-rated game was like a secret hidden from your parents' prying eyes, or smuggled to you by a hip relative like clandestine tickets to an R-rated movie.

Now you've got all these kids getting Call of Duty as a present on their eighth birthday, or playing Five Nights at Freddy's and skipping those 'ESRB' or 'PEGI' things altogether. It's not like it's illegal for parents to buy age-inappropriate games for their children - but there was a time when booting up something M-rated as a youngster had a certain mystique about it, with the sense that you were suddenly ready for anything (except maybe those ). So, which gory, gratuitous experience ushered you into gaming adulthood?

It was wonderful fun growing up around the founding of the ESRB, because even though game ratings existed, parents didn't notice or particularly care about them yet. That's how my friends and I got our young hands on Perfect Dark at the tender age of 11. GoldenEye's weird cousin with a head for alien conspiracy theories, Perfect Dark made us feel like we were getting away with something every time we played it. You could blow people up, blood would splash across the wall whenever you shot a guy, and sometimes enemies would call you a bitch as they went down. Everything a pre-teen could want.

But what really made Perfect Dark great was the multiplayer mode. Sure, it was just a bunch of blocky maps where you could play King of the Hill or shoot up mooks, but that was only part of the draw. What we loved was being our own little army, eliciting shrieks of AI terror and spraying the walls with gore, crushing those who would oppose us with the sort of chilling cruelty only a child can wield. That is, until we turned our digital guns on each other. Does anyone else hear child-like cackling on the wind?

Like all good things in a young boy's life, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis came by way of a cool older cousin. Violent games were forbidden in my household, so I dove into this one with ravenous curiosity. The blood. The guts. The gore. I wanted to see it all. RE3 was my glimpse into gaming's seedy underbelly. Then there was the Nemesis itself. Powerful and imposing, this unstoppable monster hounded my every step; its guttural cry of "STARS!" heralding my imminent doom.

Tragically, after a mere three days in Raccoon City, my parents put the kibosh on RE3. I was distraught. YouTube didn't exist yet, so how would I know if poor Jill made it out alive? That's when I found the novelization of RE3 at a local bookstore, which I secreted away under my mattress. I figured, 'My parents want me to read more, so even if they do find this, they can't get that mad, right?'

Let's see here... we've got a serial-killing clown, a dude who got his face mutilated during a botched surgery, a girl who has a porcelain mask nailed to her skull courtesy of an abusive father figure, and a Vietnam veteran turned cannibal. And that's just on the character select screen! The most iconic part of the car combat Twisted Metal series is its utterly deranged cast of psychotic misfits, but David Jaffe and co. went extra dark and disturbing for the PS2 installment.

My parents agreed to buy this horrifying concoction for my 13-year-old self based on one condition: I would skip all the potentially psyche-scarring cutscenes, meaning the only violence I would ever see would be car-on-car. I held up my end of the bargain (since I was too scared to watch anyway) - but I wasn't quite prepared for a stage set-piece that lets you fry death row inmates to a crisp, or Brimstone's special attack that launches a suicide-bombing zealot onto enemy vehicles. Let's just say my mom wasn't exactly pleased to see that kind of imagery on the family TV.

My older brother was always there to lead the charge, so I never had to worry much about getting M-rated games. As long as I kept it low-key, I could play pretty much any of his purchases without (voiced) concern from our parents. I never got in trouble at school for reenacting all that 'Animated Violence' and 'Animated Blood and Gore', so I guess it worked out ok.

Speaking of which, the only thing I vividly recall about the N64 Turok games is the blood. I doubt anything else about them is still remarkable (except maybe to virtual fog enthusiasts), but that blood was really something. It's even more impressive when you consider that Nintendo made Mortal Kombat fighters bleed frickin' Ecto Cooler just a few years before. But I digress: My first truly M-rated experience was throwing a razor-sharp Frisbee into Turok 2's giant eyeball boss so I could watch blood spurt as it bounced around inside the vitreous humor. Hooray for video games!

At least Connor got a chance to play his copy of Turok. See, I come from a pretty religious household (true story: My mom made me throw away some Magic: The Gathering cards I'd bought from a friend in middle school because the devil). So other than a quick round of Mortal Kombat or Doom at a friend's house, M-rated games were out of the question. But one day, when I was 13 or 14, I decided to press my luck and rent a copy of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I don't remember how it happened exactly, but somehow the game slipped past the watchful eye of my parents and the Blockbuster clerk well enough for me to take it home and play it.

For five whole minutes. I slapped the cartridge into my N64, booted up the tutorial, and began wandering through this foggy, dinosaur-filled realm. I took aim with my bow, and loosed an arrow toward an unsuspecting mook. Decapitation! And, because this is how these things go, this was the exact moment my dad walked in my room, shouted "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" and promptly grounded me for a week. I felt upset about it at the time, but I'm honestly kinda grateful. He saved me from a pretty terrible game.

I was in love with adventure games from the late '80s and early '90s, and the only reason I had access to them was because my dad had colleagues who would share their games. So in between playing King's Quest and Police Quest, my dad had also passed along Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards because he had no idea what it was about. Yeah, I know. I even helped Kickstart the remake a couple of years ago... and still haven't played it.

Parental controls weren’t really a thing with my parents, unless I was tying up the phone line (and he took my modem). So naive, clueless little me was walking around as this pervy guy in a white suit trying to hit on women. I kinda knew who he was since he made a cameo in Police Quest, but I didn't quite get the full picture until many years later. Many, many years later. Luckily for me (or maybe not), I couldn't figure out the puzzles and didn't get the jokes, so wandering around trying to kiss whoever showed up didn't really get me very far.

Had the ESRB actually existed when Mortal Kombat 2 launched, that would technically be my first, but instead the honor officially goes to Duke Nukem 3D. The FPS certainly earned its rating with gory violence, crude humor, and even some heavily pixelated nudity. Back in 1996, all of that had an intoxicating charm to me and my juvenile friends. It was such a thrill knowing my parents would disapprove of Duke Nukem saying “I'll rip your head off and shit down your neck,” let alone him literally doing that during the post-boss-fight cutscene.

Today, Duke’s reputation as gaming’s bad boy seems so quaint. His gory escapades look tame next to God of War, and his dirty attempts at wit can’t really compare to the colorful insults of Saints Row. Also, once I saw films like They Live, I realized all of Duke’s best lines weren’t even original. Nowadays, I'm mortified whenever I think about my seventh-grade self's excitement for Duke's breakout hit.

So, how about you? What was the first M-rated game you ever owned or played, and how did it all go down? Did you incur the wrath of your parents, or exploit their inattention to what you were actually playing? Or heck - maybe you were old enough to just buy it for yourself, no questions asked! Share in the comments below.

And if you're looking for more, check out other fun group features like