Top 10 Unfinished Video Game Levels We Never Got

Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the top 10 unfinished levels in video games we never got to see. For this list, we’re only looking at levels that were never finished or cut from the game, but they can still be accessible in the game through exploits and glitches. We’re also not including developer rooms or secret areas only available in demos. Let us know in the comments which one you’d love to play in full.

“BioShock Infinite” (2013)

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Mysterious, cut content has plagued “BioShock Infinite” for years; from the features promised in its initial, pre-rendered trailer to strange artifacts found throughout the levels. It’s specifically in the game’s final moments that cut content becomes egregious, however, when we’re shown a slew of alternate lighthouses that look extremely interesting in their own right. Chief among these is a strange observatory high up in some snowy mountains, which holds nothing but an unrendered texture. But even stranger, there was also a space station that was cut from the game, and also a lighthouse in the middle of a desert. It seems these lighthouses didn’t have cities or men attached.

“World of Warcraft” (2004)

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One of the spookiest locations in “World of Warcraft” is Karazhan Crypt, also called the Forgotten Crypt. Karazhan is a popular, classic location, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without some unusual mysteries. This crypt holds a whole host of strange sights, but the most baffling has always been the so-called “Pool of Upside-Down Sinners”. This is an enormous, green lake you can walk into that holds NPCs suspended upside-down from huge chains; it’s definitely an unsettling thing to witness. Since the game came out, the crypt has remained a mystery even after the exploits used to access it were removed. Was it a lost area, or was it something private for the developers? We might never know.

The brainiacs at Bethesda spent months working on this settlement, before realizing that it didn’t contain any quests that make it worth visiting. Rather than spend even more time working on Sutch, the decision was made to just cut it from the game. But that wasn’t good enough for Bethesda’s huge modding community; today, numerous mods exist that will return the Lost City of Sutch to its former glory. It’s definitely surprising just how complete Sutch is – it was even shown off at E3 the year before the game came out – but in the end, this was one darling Todd Howard needed to kill.

“Red Dead Redemption 2” (2018)

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Once you reach the epilogue and New Austin finally opens up for exploration, many players expected they’d be able to travel even further south, to Mexico, just like in the original game. This was because almost the entirety of the Mexico map was included in “Red Dead II”, which you can clearly see if you ride along the San Luis River. It was initially believed that Mexico would show up in “Red Dead Online”, but this didn’t happen; when you go to Mexico using glitches, it’s surprisingly detailed, even featuring recognizable landmarks. It’s now thought that Mexico was going to be in the game at some point, hence why it’s had so much work put into it, but was cut during development.

“Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3” (2001)

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Supposedly this level was a special request from Tony Hawk himself, who thought it would be one of the best possible skating locations. Unfortunately, though, recreating Paris’s famous Champ de Mars proved to be harder than anticipated. The Paris stage was ultimately cut, but parts of it were still saved on the game disc, meaning sleuths were able to find and explore it eventually. It’s mostly unfinished, but you can still see the Eiffel Tower’s completed model at the end of the map. It was also going to have elaborate canals and waterways for you to grind along, now preserved forever in their low-poly, pre-release forms.

“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” (1992)

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We’ve seen many desert-themed levels in Sonic games throughout the years, but the Dust Hill Zone was set to take Sonic to one all the way back in the early 90s. It’s also been named the Sand Shower Zone and features lots of sand and cacti. So, what’s the reason Sonic never got to experience this change of scenery? It was simply cut from the final game due to time. It would have definitely been a cool zone to play through, and luckily, some early versions of it still exist. Along with that are at least two other cut levels, Wood and Genocide City.

“Super Mario Bros.” (1985)

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The original Upside-Down, Minus World is the stuff of every “Mario” fan’s nightmares. The strange level became public knowledge via a magazine three years after the game came out, back in the days where absolutely every detail of a game wasn’t immediately disseminated on forums. From then on, it was possible for every player to go through the steps to reach the Minus World – but be warned, once there, you’ll never escape. Unless you have an older save to reload, of course. It’s set up like a water level without any water and there’s no way out. Additional “Minus Worlds” have shown up in later “Mario” games, too, but according to Miyamoto, they’re not intentional.

“Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep” (2010)

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One big Disney movie that hasn’t had its due where “Kingdom Hearts” is concerned is “The Jungle Book”. Every “Kingdom Hearts” game has plenty of unused and cut content because Square Enix tries to cram as many Disney references in there as possible, but the disappearance of Jungle Book World in “Birth by Sleeps” is perhaps the saddest omission. Parts of Jungle Book World were created and remain saved in the game’s code, accessible through exploits and cheats. From there, you can explore a handful of the most significant locations from the movie that were built and designed before the world was canceled.

“Pokémon Red and Blue” (1998)

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It’s believed that Glitch City was supposed to be an additional city in the world of “Red” and “Blue”, but it got cut somewhere during development, possibly due to time. Since removing cut content from a game completely can often have unpredictable repercussions on the rest of the code, Glitch City was left in – though it’s not intended to be accessible. When you manage to exploit your way into it, you’re faced with an ominous, buggy world where nothing makes sense. Also mysterious is how anybody found Glitch City in the first place since it’s extremely complicated to actually get there, requiring hundreds of specific steps and saving and reloading at certain points.

“Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” (2016)

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The development of “Metal Gear Solid V” was so tumultuous that it led to the now-infamous split between Hideo Kojima and Konami. It was dragging on for so long and costing so much money that Konami got rid of Kojima and released the game before it was finished, which led to most of its second half being infamously bad. But if you had the Collector’s Edition and watched the included Blu-ray, you’d be able to watch “Episode 51”, the so-called cut ending of the game, also known as “Kingdom of the Flies”. It’s a series of unfinished cutscenes, though Kojima himself said that even Episode 51 wasn’t intended to be the final ending of the game.