Prototype For Unreleased GameCube Platformer 'Pickles' Has Been Discovered

"The game about monkeys riding unicycles"

by Alana Hagues Tue 29th Aug 2023

A Nintendo collector and YouTuber has discovered a lost prototype for an unreleased game developed by Santa Cruz Games for the GameCube.

cake bought a dev GameCube but inside he discovered a disc for a unreleased GameCube game. Testing out the prototype, he discovered it was for Pickles, a platformer/adventure game all about monkeys riding unicycles. Well, at least, that's what we know.

According to cake, he believes the disc has 12 levels on it, split between two different worlds, but the prototype is proving to be a bit unstable, meaning he's only got the first world to work currently. The level in question appears to be a big wharf, with wooden pathways suspended above water.

Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube764k

Watch on YouTube

cake has managed to capture some of the footage of the prototype and shared it on Twitter. You can check out the footage below.

Most other data we can find on this game has been compiled by unseen64, which reveals that Santa Cruz was working on the title in 2005/06. The demo that cake is playing may well be the demo referred to on the site. It was apparently shown at Game Connection 2006 but otherwise has barely been seen since.

cake is planning to dump the ROM of the game online — in what would be an important move for game preservation. cake also wants to make a YouTube video documenting the available levels and footage, meaning the game that we once knew very little about will be revealed to the world.

Have you heard of Pickles before? What do you think of this new footage? Let us know in the comments.

[source twitter.com]

Alana has been with Nintendo Life since 2022, and while RPGs are her first love, Nintendo is a close second. She enjoys nothing more than overthinking battle strategies, characters, and stories. She also wishes she was a Sega air pirate.

1
EarthboundBenjy
Tue 29th Aug 2023

How cool.
Games that never see the light of day.... there must be hundreds and thousands of cancelled games that nobody ever gets to ever see at all. What an interesting glimpse behind the scenes.

2
RupeeClock
Tue 29th Aug 2023

It might be very easy to dump the ROM (or ISO in this case), any soft-modded Wii can dump standard Wii or GameCube discs using CleanRip.
Although it might not be that straight forward considering this is a development disc rather than a retail disc, but what a cool find!

3
Henmii
Tue 29th Aug 2023

That's pretty cool!

4
Samalik
Tue 29th Aug 2023

@RupeeClock I think development discs would be a lot easier to dump, since they would likely lack certain protections needed in the retail version

5
Fizza
Tue 29th Aug 2023

'I'll take a double bossy triple deluxe on a raft 4x4 animal style extra shingles with a shimmy and the squeeze light axle grease make it cry burn it and let it swim'

'....we serve game consoles here sir'

6
RupeeClock
Tue 29th Aug 2023

@Samalik
Maybe? There's a chance that the disc is just re-writable media, but a majority of PC disc drives wouldn't be able to read the GameCube mini-DVD format.

7
The_BAAD_Man
Tue 29th Aug 2023

How cool! It looks great, too. Love those lunging shark animations.

8
Bobb
Tue 29th Aug 2023

My mind is blown way harder than it should had been. I'm having a hard time putting it into words how cool it must be to find something like this first hand

9
N64-ROX
Tue 29th Aug 2023

The demo gameplay looks pretty simplistic, but the graphics look super nice. Really bold and bright for the era. Reminds me of Super Mario Sunshine, but not many developers were pulling off that kind of thing back then. Lots of nicely rounded, cartoony curves.