Mickey's texture is not loaded into Depot, and it's in 2 parts, so not really possible a random bit hit would cause this. Also, if you do XBLA, and set to the "retro graphics", what appears in that spot? I'm not clear exactly what spot you're at there to compare to original, but would be interesting to compare to retail. My guess is they just did things like that as a work in progress sort of fun, but never intended it to stay. I think the story got mixed up with the "Rare logo" appearing on Depot, versus an unused depot decal texture that was listed on TCRF. And there is that random decal showing up in Aztec that is not well known, hidden up high that Ben Colclough noticed recently (probably others have seen just not well known).

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

In this video, I was toggling the retro graphics and the Mickey graffito is there. That being said, you are right that it's in two parts, making a bit flip unlikely.

@subdrag

9 ай бұрын

​@@GamerFolkloreah Ok that's good. I can't tell where it is. But in original N64 version what graffiti is there?

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

@@subdrag I just checked, and there is actually *no* graffiti in the spot where Mickey appears in the XBLA version! It's a blue crate near the starting area.

@melissaattaway7426

9 ай бұрын

Hey goose, in regards to the Brit having a save file in a sealed game, he is. It alone anymore. It happened to me with goldeneye as well as a few other games over the years. I'd have to rack my brain to remember them all but I do te!ember it being that way for me on goldeneye for N64 and ridge racer for PS1. Not super common but I don't understand why the Brit has ent heard similar stories. I would bet money that it has happened to all of us at some point. Just probably didn't notice... Also, I'm chris. Melissa's husband. Been watching you for a couple years now. Good stuff bud. Keep on keepin on. Cheers from alabama.

@bobbobby1624

8 ай бұрын

@@GamerFolklore yeah could be that the OP got hold of a preview reviewers copy or something, but I would imagine if such a thing existed someone would've found it by now but I guess its possible that if the build was very very near the final build they mightve stuck it in a mock up final build case to allow the publisher to get their own photos of the cart, so its possible that copy is currently sitting in someone collection right now, just sitting in the bottom of that box of loose carts you picked up unceremoniously holding Mickey hostage one added note that makes this theory more plausible is that the XBLA build also had the Mickey texture present, which would imply they had Mickey in the game right up until the end of development and it was one of the last things to be cut, probably with the advice of their lawyers or Nintendo's lawyers, and when the XBLA copy was being developed they had lost that last minute pre-gold patch from the archived source code and ended up using the 0.99 build from before Mickey was cut the only issue I have is that the OP posted his story after the XBLA leak, so its possible he is just making up the story because it would be plausible, if he had posted this story before the XBLA leak I would've 100% said this was the most likely scenario but after, it becomes just as plausible he made it up as it would be believable

Interestingly, one of the least known pieces of graffiti in Depot is there in plain sight: the Rare logo spray painted on a wall near the train at the end. People run right by it thousands of times while speedrunning and never notice it.

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

I literally only discovered this the other night while getting some footage for this video. And I was stunned!!

Although not as 100% certain as OP is, I vaguely remember seeing the Mickey Mouse as well. I had a 1997 launch copy of the game and Nintendo was no stranger to change content and patching games for subsequent batches of cartridges. I believe it's legit.

@emilymarriott5927

8 ай бұрын

That would be a reasonable avenue of investigation: nab rom dumps of the earliest release version in various regions and see if the graphic appears there. With Disney being Disney, I could see an initial release with the graphic, then Disney stepping in and going "no" and then all versions after having the graphic removed.

@Saturn2888

6 ай бұрын

@@emilymarriott5927 I've seen these release version changes before. My launch Wii Sports doesn't match other people's copies. So I know it's possible to have multiple versions. My launch Smash Bros Melee also feels different for the same reason to the point where I couldn't play a later revision.

@ltdrockeresp

5 ай бұрын

I feel like I remember it too, like a shitty bug eyed version of mickey as a rat

@thiagovidal6137

5 ай бұрын

@emilymarriott5927 Ocarina of Time is a living proof of it. I also got the golden relase cartridge in which the mirror shield has the same symbol as the Turkey flag and temple of fire has some religious chanting. Both things were famously changed on later cartridges.

Every copy of Goldeneye is Personalized. But in all seriousness, I think either OP misremembered the other red and white graffiti, then seeing the unused Mickey Mouse graphic online, his brain auto-filled it onto the other texture in his mind, or possibly it got brought back by someone using a gameshark on the cartridge without OP knowing.

@uchusky08

9 ай бұрын

Yes, when I saw that other red and white graffiti, I said "that's it. That's what OP is remembering" You combine that with the blog and boom

@ThePartyProfessors

9 ай бұрын

@@uchusky08 he did say that he remembered specifically that it was weird having the mickey mouse franchise in a 007 game but this could easily be a memory to fill in the gaps as it had been years since he had read the blog post and our memory isn't the most reliable

@rgerber

9 ай бұрын

it actually looks so similar to a mickey mouse@@uchusky08

If the textures *are* on the original cartridge, but there is some flag to not render them, it is very much possible that OPs cartridge was somehow "damaged", where the flag was set incorrectly - meaning the asset was rendered when it wasn't meant to. Yes, it is very unlikely, but also not impossibly so.

@PlutonianPenguin

8 ай бұрын

I wonder if it's just a single bit flag to tells them not to display. If so, it's very likely that bit could be flipped by a cosmic ray.

@gragogflying-anvil3605

8 ай бұрын

@@PlutonianPenguin Some other comment mentioned that the texture isn't even loaded in that level and that it consists of two parts. That means that a single bit flip (or even a dozen) is not enough.

6:14 Like other commenters, my first reaction was also that there's definitely Mickey Mouse graffiti on those shipping containers. And then when you showed this clip, and I'm pretty sure that's what I was registering and remembering as Mickey Mouse. To me that's easy to call Mickey Mouse at a glance. That looks like Fantasia Mickey Mouse without the hat and maybe with the ears in a slightly off position. And I'd be hard pressed to say that's definitely not Mickey Mouse.

@dekufiremage7808

9 ай бұрын

I don't think it looks much like Mickey Mouse when you can thoroughly inspect it in high resolution, but glancing at it on an old CRT would very easily make it come across as Mickey.

@beardalaxy

9 ай бұрын

@@dekufiremage7808 I was gonna say, through a typical CRT TV that could be easily mistaken as the same texture.

@gi_nattak

9 ай бұрын

Yeah it totally does look like Micky, I’d bet my house on that being what the OP saw…but if it’s NOT Micky, then that’d be one hell of a coincidence that an unused Micky graphic actually was in the game also lol… I personally think the used graphic that looks like Micky, was an edit of the actual unused Micky graphic, which allowed them to use it.

@SYNTHSTRUMENTALS

8 ай бұрын

This is the correct answer

@Bawkr

8 ай бұрын

Looks like Mickey to me, what is it if it's not mickey. What's the actual graphic?

It's important to note that N64 cartridges (games) have different software revisions. For example, bugs were fixed, and newer cartridges replaced old ones in stores. If you download ROMs off the internet, or even just look at the copyright screens (during the intros) for Goldeneye, or Perfect Dark, you'll see version numbers. So it could be that they removed this in a later revision to avoid legal issues from Disney. Obviously, we didn't know about this back in the day because patches on consoles were not a thing. Edit: I feel this could be true because the code was commented out, as you said. It's common to comment out code rather than deleting it, because you never know what sort of domino effect you can have on the rest of the game. RARE even slipped a ZXSpectrum emulator WITH GAMES [that they developed] into Goldeneye, which can be re-enabled with a ROM edit. They just commented it out, AFAIK.

@Lebon19

9 ай бұрын

Sure, games had revisions but the thing is, I don't think GE ever had revisions that changed a whole lot. From the top of my head, in the JP version, they added a couple of BAs and improved auto-aim. Otherwise, like Goose explored in older videos, the game is very solid code-wise. In fact, there are only 2 OoB known (pulling that from memory): in Silo and Train. Neither help speedrunning and hard to execute.

@kholdfuzion4538

9 ай бұрын

the biggest change ge had was in the pal version they removed spectrum emu and most of the rest of the leftover debug code, about 4% of the codebase.

@Lebon19

9 ай бұрын

@@kholdfuzion4538 Even then, this revision only removed the code that didn't do anything and something the user didn't even see. So, my point still stand in a way.

@pleasedontwatchthese9593

9 ай бұрын

Peope should look at the other versions and see

@just9911

9 ай бұрын

I don’t know if this means much but I got my copy on release day and I played the shit out of it. I specifically went looking for Easter eggs, never saw the mouse.

As soon as you mentioned the Mickey Mouse graffiti, my first reaction was "yeah, of course, it's on the Depot level." To get to the end of the video and discover it's not in the N64 game? I'm truly spooked. What can I say, I'm with OP here.

@AngryChineseWoman

9 ай бұрын

Do you still have your game cartridge ?

@lh8vd69

9 ай бұрын

I did the same thing. I have an n64 and og goldeneye cart (though not the same one I had back in the late 90's), almost want to dig them out and see

@kaneda010

9 ай бұрын

@@AngryChineseWoman Alas, I sold my PAL game collection long ago. The mystery continues..

@HansBelphegor

8 ай бұрын

​@@lh8vd69same

It may lend credence to one or more theories to know whether the graffiti appears on the same set of crates OP remembers. If yes, he may have legitimately seen the texture in game, and if no, it points to mismatched memory

@ShAdYMiLkMaN98

9 ай бұрын

This is the crucial inquiry and I suspect it is not on the same set of crates or it would have been mentioned.

@freedustin

9 ай бұрын

the crate location was mentioned early on 2:25...how you guys get mandela'd in less than 20 minutes?

@TheHappyWhale

9 ай бұрын

@@freedustin That's what I was referring to. What I meant was whether the texture, when re-enabled, showed up on the same set of crates that was mentioned here. I haven't played the game so I don't have any knowledge of the map to know for sure.

@freedustin

9 ай бұрын

@@TheHappyWhale there is no such thing a re-enable a texture. they are placed individually and manually onto objects...once that's deleted there is no way to know which crate it was intended for. But he did say, it was a specific group in the back. But that ROM hack proves there is no way to just restore it to its pre-release intentions.

@AlfredThompsonIV

9 ай бұрын

If it was legitimately seen in game and it was an issue with the cartridge then it would more likely have been a replacement of another texture in a different spot. An accidental bit flip could reference the wrong texture from the game data since that texture is still there, their game just loads the wrong one... or you're right and the reference is still there in the same spot in the n64 release but the developers just reference something like texture 9 which is transparent to hide it while texture 8 was the mickey mouse one.

Another point to the Mismemory theory: the Philadelphia track in Mickey's Speedway USA has some similarities to Depot and could reinforce the association between Mickey and Depot in OP's mind. Actually that game's tracks may contain many assets from previous Rareware games.

@audreyazwell

9 ай бұрын

I remember it & never played mickeys speedway

@levioch

8 ай бұрын

OP here, never played that game even in emulation, much less owned it. No confusion there.

It would be interesting to have Goldeneye developers' take on this

@Chuma95

9 ай бұрын

Yup, honestly they are the ones that can answer this easily

@dekufiremage7808

9 ай бұрын

I mean it's been over 25 years at this point they might not remember doing any of the graffiti art much less the Mickey Mouse one they were told to remove

I want to share something similar that could possibly explain it When I was a kid I owned Final Fantasy 3 American Version (AKA FF6 in Japan) One day I load up the game and the screen went white, I quickly shut it off removed the cart, put it back and it started up fine. However when I checked my characters I now had 999 Excaliburs, Gem Boxes, Economizers, Offerings, and various other things like graphics got warped or changed. No, this wasn't the sketch bug, because it happened when I booted the game, nor was a game genie ever used As a young kid I remember calling the Nintendo hotline asking if my game had a "virus" The point I'm getting at here is both games have the ability to save and write data, by some miracle some random save code changed how my cart worked, could the same happen here even without the use of a game genie

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

That is a very interesting story! Thanks for sharing. I wonder how many of these "one off" or near-one-off stories many of us experienced back in the day. Especially knowing now how computer memory can be altered by external factors. Maybe there are thousands of similar stories, and we'll never truly be able to get to the bottom of them all!

@ElekiSerket

9 ай бұрын

Oh yeah, that's an option I hadn't considered... cartridge games were very prone to data and code corruption if the cartridge was removed or "tilted" while playing. Some people deliberately did that to achieve some specific effect, but most of the time the results of those kind of scenarios always seemed very wild and unpredictable. Maybe something like that happened? Either that or it was simply a damaged cartridge, but in both cases I suppose the same principle of unpredictable alteration applies.

@BlameTheController

9 ай бұрын

also to add, that save file was stupidly overpowered every warrior type could attack 8 times Offering+ genji glove every spell caster could double cast Ultima each turn for 2 mana and Shadow was throwing Excaliburs at trash tier enemies just for fun

@DomDomTheFirst

9 ай бұрын

I had a similar event once whilst playing Theme Park on the mega drive. I remember the cart getting knocked whilst playing and the game crashed so I hit reset. When the game loaded up again I basically had infinite money. I saved the game and rebooted and yup, infinite money. I tried to replicate it on a different cart but couldn't so who knows 🤷‍♂️

@marcunbut1058

9 ай бұрын

Textures and items are two separate kind of data so yes its possible to get a glitch who give us stuff, but it can't activate unused textures. What happened to your textures is way more simple: like you said they been changed and warped, in other words they have been altered in the data. Textures are like everything else in a game: corruptable, thats what your glitch did. It corrupted your cartridge data. But its absolutly not possible for any data corruption to had an unused texture, as it only alter the textures themself and not change which or callee by the game to be shown on screen.

Could be similar to old the wrong warp/item swap/fairy jar technique. Some parameter is fulfilled which shunts the texture memory along a few digits, causing the game to display the mouse. It makes sense as those codes would be stored next to/near each other in the RAM. Sounds plausible.

I've had weird stuff like this happen to me in games in the past. The N64 is pretty infamous for having weird things happen if the cartridge isn't inserted properly, and since it's still in the games code, something could have triggered its reappearance, especially if it was a launch console/copy of the game etc.

@mikaruyami

8 ай бұрын

It could also be a certain batch of copies that went out with the code active, either by mistake or faulty copying.

@Jolis_Parsec

8 ай бұрын

I had something weird happen in Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Xbox where one of the nerds that I was making Jimmy pick on in the dormitory just straight up “female doggo” slapped Jimmy in the midst of the fight and I actually stopped playing in complete shock before laughing my behind off since I had never seen the nerd in question (I think it was Algie or the one nerd who plays tabletop RPGs in the library) do that before or since. Knowing that game’s hectic development, I’m not surprised I discovered something purely by chance that I haven’t seen anybody discussing online so far.

@Wenjo936

8 ай бұрын

Hello you

I believe the third theory. After all, the 'spyder' is listed in the manual of some golderneye versions as a weapon so this could be the same thing.

@uobilo

5 ай бұрын

20+ years ago my friend told me once he had found a weird gun he had never seen before in Archives, ive spent hours trying to find it never found it

@wrathchildrocks

5 ай бұрын

@@uobilo I was told back then you could open Ourumovs briefcase in silo under certain conditions. The 90s were a wild time for rumors.

My friends, it just keeps happening... or does it?!

This story kind of reminds me of my weird broken version of Call of Duty Black ops 1 that had all the levels unlocked from the start when I got it, which allowed me to get the achievement from doing the campaign on Veteran by just doing the last mission before I even got some of the mandatory achievements for doing other story missions. Only thing I have to prove this is that my Xbox profile has the achievements unlocked in a non sensical order (With the dates they were earned) which doesn't make sense if I would have played the levels in the correct order and unlocked them normally.

@zeroone8800

6 ай бұрын

How would that work on disc. I could believe that for cartridges, but how would that work with discs?

If the graffiti did exist in a pre-release version of the game, it's possible that there was a leak and there were people out there who made "fake" Goldeneye cartridges using this old build of the game. I'm basing this on a story about people who did a similar thing in the 90s by buying cheaper Gameboy games, deleting the data, and uploading Pokemon Red to them for resale.

@bradleyrossross963

8 ай бұрын

I was thinking the same thing, sometimes bootlegers will even find unused code in the game and re add it and try to use that as a selling point for the boot leg, like this version has features that the real one doesn't have.

A thought, since this wasn't made clear in the video. Since we know of one location the graffiti exists in the xbla version, has anyone gone back to the different n64 rom versions that exist and check if that location still has an extra texture in that location? It's possible that when noticed, the developer could have simply removed the pointer for the correct texture, resulting in a transparent texture that still exists in the code. This could help confirm if the texture was ever in that location on any released rom.

The fourth and most plausible theory is that OP had a build that was accidentally shipped (probably close to release) that still had the Mickey Mouse grafitti in it. Small changes like these are often last minute changes in game development. It's very possible not all the carts that were being produced were updated or checked over because of how inconsequential it was.

@himethisisme

9 ай бұрын

I'll corroborate that it's possible to have obtained a cart containing a not-for-retail build and not realized. I still own a copy of Jet Force Gemini with a "NOT FOR RESALE" label on it (which I didn't notice as a 14-year-old kid...). You can get as far as the second level, where one of the panels to free the last hostage isn't there, so it softlocks. I believe it was meant for demo only. Wouldn't be too surprised if this story were true.

@toddjenkins2561

9 ай бұрын

​@@himethisismethat was probably for store demos and manufactured for that purpose. The idea that an early build leaked into the retail manufacturing is much less likely

@himethisisme

9 ай бұрын

@@toddjenkins2561 Maybe. It doesn't seem super unrealistic that an early build might have wound up in circulation somehow, either from a round of QA or from a store demo copy shipped before the release date. I know the dev cycle wasn't nearly as tight in the 90s as it is now, but it was still possible that the build was altered in the weeks before release.

@toddjenkins2561

9 ай бұрын

@@himethisisme agree, not impossible, just saying that an intended created cart is different and known. I know Ocarina had multiple versions released so maybe the first 100 in a certain factory had mickey still in or something. Def possible. Maybe it was a last second removal for copyright concerns

@himethisisme

9 ай бұрын

@@toddjenkins2561 I completely agree. Definitely plausible but not confirmed by any stretch.

6:15 proves the guy right. "bu... bu... but it only looks similar!" Yes, let's assume it's not the Mickey texture, show me the other texture that could be mistaken for Mickey then... There isn't one. So, the guy was right, you all missed it and he did not, that texture is indeed Mickey. Look at the footage (in this video) of the XBLA Mickey and look at him switching back and forth between old and new textures, focus on Mickey's thumb... See how higher rez it looks in the old build?! Now imagine the Mickey texture on 64, seen on a composite CRT... That would have looked like Mickey

The version of GoldenEye 007 that was released was technically a ROM hack of the version submitted to Nintendo for final certification. While the game was undergoing said last-minute testing, an issue was discovered with the game's memory that caused glitches in the textures featured in the Frigate level. To combat this, programmer Mark Edmonds wrote a tool to extract the game's code and data from the ROM, adjusted the hex values in the game's memory to improve the performance in the level, recompressed it, and directly added it back into the ROM image without recompiling. This version was sent back to Nintendo and certified for release as the final version of the game... someone should have asked OP what country he was from. If from the UK or Japan, much higher likelihood of development chain of custody shenanigans. I am curious if there are ROM region differences with the textures.

@beardalaxy

9 ай бұрын

That's super fascinating.

@levioch

8 ай бұрын

OP here, Cart was purchased winter of 1997 around Christmas time on a local toys R-Us in south Texas, NTSC along with the n64. Nothing special about it except they were out of stock everywhere and got lucky at the last minute. The cart came in a normal box nothing out of the ordinary. I truly believe this is a Mandela effect, otherwise someone would of uploaded a rom version online already.

here is the most likely explanation... he had a bootleg cart that used a beta version of Goldeneye which is the same version used as the basis for the XBLA remaster. at a fleamarket I used to go to as a kid every Saturday, there was a guy who on occasion sold games ahead of launch, and they were almost always bootleg repros with beta versions on them. he sold Pokemon Gold/Silver weeks before eu launch and the versions he sold were super buggy alpha versions, where your PC boxes would completely glitch out any Pokémon you stored in your boxes. so you'd store a hoothoot lvl 10 and sometimes it turned into a level 99 Lugia n shit. so yeah, I know first hand that leaked beta/alpha repros of Nintendo published games existed in the early 2000s... so it is 100% plausible that the guy got a repro of a beta version. and the XBLA version having the texture enabled almost confirms it imo, since it shows at one point the texture was enabled by Rare.

@DonnyKirkMusic

9 ай бұрын

That's interesting about the gold/silver bootlegs...I swear that I rented (yes, you could rent portable games at fucking Blockbuster back about 24 years ago) a version of Pokemon Silver that had a skateboard, as well, and you could clearly see the character scooting himself around, 1 foot on the skateboard. Later, I see that there was an unused skateboard back when the beta of Gold and Silver was leaked, and my brain immediately jumped to that strange memory I had. It may be unrelated, but yeah.

@kevboard

9 ай бұрын

@@DonnyKirkMusic the one I and my friends had was easy to identify as a bootleg, the cart was black and pretty cheap plastic. it didn't have a skateboard tho, it was just a very buggy version of Gold and Silver 😭

@Linkaless

8 ай бұрын

It would be interesting if Goose could ask OP if he remembered the cart coming in a retail box, or any other information about it's origin.

I am reminded of the Tick Tock Clock "upwarp" phenomenon on SM64. The working theory is that a cosmic ray flipped a single bit of data which caused Mario to warp up the way he did. If this specific graffiti asset was toggled on and off using a binary flag, then could it be a working theory also that a cosmic ray caused Mickey Mouse to appear? Damn, I've just envisioned a future where speerunners spend a million hours playing a level omitting an objective, praying for the cosmos to literally align and flip the specific bit relating to said objective. "Calle W Jr gets a 0:52 completion on Dam SA after 20,000 hours invested".

@dekufiremage7808

9 ай бұрын

The problem with this is that the art is actually stored as two separate textures, so a bit flip would have to occur twice in an incredibly specific way

@dynagamerproductions8249

9 ай бұрын

@@dekufiremage7808 Ah, I see, so not a working idea then. Thanks for clearing that up. What about the notion that a limited supply of beta cartridges were released (possibly by mistake) which contained a few non-final level designs? Unlikely, but possible nonetheless, although these cartridges would probably have had unique "NUS" serial IDs

@dekufiremage7808

9 ай бұрын

@dynagamerproductions8249 It's either that, simple mismemory from seeing that other red and black texture combined with the mickey mouse blog posts, or thirdly just an outright lie from someone wanting to craft a Mandela Effect story

17:50 That happened to me too, I'm also from the UK. The first time I emulated Goldeneye I was confused when there weren't four 007 files by default, I wrote it off as a difference between the NTSC and PAL versions

@pukipwner

9 ай бұрын

Me too! I'm Canadian though...but my uncle got it for me for Christmas and it was still in the original packaging. I had no idea this wasn't normal! I just assumed the developers gave us a file labeled "007" with all cheats unlocked as a bit of a joke - like 007 had played this game himself and beaten everything with ease

@jazzabighits4473

8 ай бұрын

@@pukipwner Dude, same here honestly and I'm from Australia

Great vid, would love to see more of these. I agree with your 1st theory, guy saw that image and simply got his wires crossed when seeing the Mickey image, causing his original memory to be Mickey. Doesn't explain the location difference though...

I thought this was going to be some clickbait nonsense, but there's a lot of substance to this. I subbed, keep up the good job bro! ❤🎮🕹

Talking about rare phenomenon in the game reminded me of the time one of those weird things happened in one of my old N64 cartridges, albeigh not with GE but with Diddy Kong Racing. I clearly remember one day I went to play just a couple races in Track Mode and I saw all the races from the final world, the Space Stage (idk the correct name) were unlocked. It was a huge shock because I was never able to beat Wizpig and therefore never was able to unlock those tracks as you were supposed to. I played all those stages for hours, since that was something I had always wanted to unlock, and was very sad when I realized they would probably be gone the next time I had to turn off the console. And I was correct, once I turned it off they were never unlocked again. I tried replicating that glitch but it never occurred again.

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

I can totally envision this happening, it's like the "opposite" of when the game deletes your save files, but they come back after a reset. I wonder what causes it? It's so strange. Thank you for sharing!!

@UltimatePerfection

8 ай бұрын

@@GamerFolklore Cosmic rays.

Another fascinating video, Goose. I'm always eager to see this kind of content of video game mysteries.

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

Thank you Ludosus! The N64 Iceberg will be coming soon!

Is it possible that it does appear in the vanilla game, but theres something(s) you have to do to get it to appear and no one noticed? Ive seen a similar thing in fnaf 2 where a certain puppet render gets labeled as "unused" but in reality it just flashes by so fast that people dont see it

Would be pretty funny if the devs somehow got the publishers to print a few cartridges with Mickey just for shits and giggles.

@pleasedontwatchthese9593

9 ай бұрын

Or like it's triggered in a weird way

@beardalaxy

9 ай бұрын

that's like those memes where someone has a ridiculous encounter with a famous person and they say "try and tell people, they'll never believe you."

@kromanaut

9 ай бұрын

Correct me if I am wrong, but in the days when game carts used Mask ROMS, wouldn't it have been really hard (prohibitively uneconomical) to have just a couple of the ROMS be different? Since you need a new mask to create a different version of the ROM, you would certainly make an entire production run of that ROM version from any given mask, not just a few one-offs.

You'd think the the pre-cheated-in-the-box cartridge would be an example of factory testing. Every (say) 10000 carts, they'd pluck a cart off the assembly line and see if it works. Such a task could possibly get boring for the guy who had to do it, and maybe they just happened to mess around with a gameshark that time. Once the cart is verified, it's put back in the line to be packaged and sold.

@dragonnyxx

8 ай бұрын

They'd never need to manually play a cart to test it, they'd just scan its contents to make sure it was byte-for-byte identical with the master copy. Such a verification step is standard with any EEPROM burn I've ever done, so I would be shocked if it weren't part of the game cartridge manufacturing process and applied to literally every single ROM chip they made.

@gragogflying-anvil3605

8 ай бұрын

Using things like a gameshark doesn't modify the ROM (read-only memory), so it would have to do with save data, which I find very unlikely that there's a flag to make that graffito appear.

@Bawkr

8 ай бұрын

He's talking about the files not mickey mouse pretty sure & I agree with him. Sure something can scan out fine but testing a game every hour or so as they print or even more frequently makes a heck of a lot of sense & they just forgot to delete the save.

The fact that the textures are actually in the game files makes me wonder if this some kind of undiscovered easter egg, where a specific set of conditions would cause it to load into the level.

@flazuki5288

9 ай бұрын

Thats what I was thinking. Like the extremely unlikely event with the rabbit on toilet in grunty industries in banjo tooie

@beardalaxy

9 ай бұрын

see the pinned comment, seems like that would be impossible since it isn't coded to load into the level at all.

@tsiefhtes

9 ай бұрын

I believe it was a glitch, I had a friend that had it. When I later bought the game from him he deleted all his saves and I never saw it on my play throughs.

@SLB94

9 ай бұрын

@@tsiefhtes I beleive it. Stranger things have happened. People are still discovering new things from 20+ year old games to this day. The textures are there, so its hard to just pass this off as a mandella effect.

I can't say I ever saw that while playing. Strangest thing I do remember is getting enemies to pull out DD44's by wounding them. Thanks for the lore as always bud.

@Myself086

9 ай бұрын

Scientists do that.

@rgerber

9 ай бұрын

even stranger- very rarely they even pulled a grenade lol

I wonder if a cart-tilt glitch could cause the textures to appear? I know that, though rare, people have been able to get access to the Arwing ship in OoT with tilting the cartridge in the console while it's running.

Your logo/pfp is awesome. I haven't seen a more stylish one on KZread, and I'm including most top brands as well not just random KZreadrs.

It doesn't seem too far fetched that somehow a few copies of an early version of the game slipped through the cracks. I wonder if there were any other inconsistencies on that game cartridge.

When I read the title of this video I thought, "oh yeah, I forgot there was a Mickey mouse in the Depot level" and I was fairly sure I had seen it. I think what actually happened is I read somewhere that there was a Mickey mouse graffiti and I saw the image of it online. Then I went and looked through the level but never found it. I didn't know it wasn't really there, pretty sure I just got bored of looking. It's easy to invent memories and then go on believing that they're real.

Great theories! I imagine it was released intentionally as an Easter egg. You would be the coolest kid on the block with that cartridge. I am eagerly awaiting the next video!!

My brother to this day still recalls the time he was playing frigate and Xenia and the helicopter pilot appeared,I remember him constantly replaying that level trying to get it to trigger again.

I remember a Mickey Mouse graffiti on this level. Didnt know this was a thing. I still have the same cartridge game. Will definitely check this out next time i travel back to visit my parents.

@seanissomething

8 ай бұрын

Please update us!!

@AgentMrX7

8 ай бұрын

@@seanissomething will do but I won't be flying to parents until at least Christmas. I'm hoping this is not a mismemory 🤞

@akuamasteroftheelements

8 ай бұрын

commenting to see what happens

@GrandMasterLynx

8 ай бұрын

Pretty cool Christmas will be here soon

@spartan316kaos

8 ай бұрын

Following for updates

If the XBLA had Mickey it implies that he was in it late into development as they would have likely been working with as close to release code as they could get. So if a pre-release build got stolen and pirated it might have had Mickey in it. Back in the day piracy was harder to do but it did happen and the pirated versions were often sold as normal versions by smaller retail stores.

For years, I searched for a room in Jurassic Park for SNES... it had 2 generators in it. I had seen it many times when I was a kid but could only ever find the room with a single generator as an adult. It drove me nuts for years and I played several physical and emulated copies trying to find it. I began questioning my sanity/memory but then one day I found it: A screenshot on the back of the box, presumably from an earlier build before release. It isn't in the game but I had seen that box so many times, it had burned into my mind as a kid.

@hamrich871

8 ай бұрын

I remember the KF7 Soviet looking more like a real AK on the back of the actual box art of goldeneye. I always thought that version looked better.

Good stuff Goose, enjoyed this one a lot.

~ M Y F R I E N D S ~

@logalogalog

9 ай бұрын

It just.... Keeps.... happening...

6:15 I think one could perceive this very much for a mickey mouse, especially if you look for it. His ears are to the right, the face s white looking to the left. Looks like he's yawning or sticking his fist into his mouth. It's just way too close to the searched graphic to not confuse them them if you've seen it before.

This video has opened my eyes. My brother, cousin and I would all play an N64 that my parents got us second hand. It came in the original box but you could tell someone had been in it. I thought nothing of it until this post. Some of the videos Goose has done has happened to me. The mickey mouse one happened to us. Among other things. We didn't have anything to mess with the code personally. Our cart could access the other bond characters in multiplayer (with a few inputs, ) giving us access to Connery etc. This N64 was given away a few years later. I bought another one myself a years after that. I have never been able to find or replicate any of the strange things since. Conclusion: it was either the cart and the console that was unique or altered in some way. I can only apologise that I don't have the original hardware I once had to check for sure.

I strongly remember being at my neighbors house when I we were 7 years old and my friend Nick saying, "psh.. mickey mouse? that's gey!" and blasting it while I was asking him for the controller.

This does seem to be odd cuz I think I remember the Mickey mouse in the original N64. I was big into graffiti when I was a teenager so I would look around in games at the graffiti. I haven't played the N64 version in over a decade but I can replay it and see if it's in there I still have my original cartridge.

@TomSFox

8 ай бұрын

Please do.

The most plausible explanation is that the op's memory is bad like most humans and they were a dumb kid when they 'experienced' this

It's funny, the instant I saw the image on your video I knew exactly which crate to at. I used an Action Replay Pro back then. I'm the guy who originally made the code to unlock all the multi-player characters to spare you the long push button code sequence. I'm gonna have to get the N64 out of storage and look into this.

Two conclusions of mine: 1. I'd say the developers put the true Fantasia Mickey graffiti in the game but it got removed in development due to copyright issues, so they replaced it with the 6:21 lookalike graffiti as a joke (it looks like Mickey sticking his tongue out). The original graffiti lived on in code, which is why it ended up in the XBLA version. 2. OP saw it through a gameshark in the 90s. I know he said he didn't own a gameshark, but possibly he did and has forgotten, or his brother got the gameshark and OP didn't know.

The decal you found looks like the two mickey textures overlayed ontop each other, one upside down and flipped.

I personally believe the 3rd explanation where OP had some weird early build cartridge... This reminds me of your vid about the PD Chicago ghost

@jamesknapp64

9 ай бұрын

I'm of the same opinion

@veretos7

9 ай бұрын

Who knows, maybe Rare had to put an early build on the first batch of carts bc the game wasnt 100% totally done (all bugs worked out and such) by launch date. Or maybe some lawyer got wind of such cross contamination and the code of all subsequent cartridges produced (the majority of production) didnt have mickey

is there any news in the goldeneye speedrunning scene? I think last time I heard of an UWR was Aztec?

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

There's not been much. Some Facility WR stuff, I've been thinking about making a video about it in November!

I had a similar to Mandela effect type situation happen to me a few year ago. Basically when i was a kid around 1987 or so i played Rush'N Attack in the arcades. I fell in love with the game and one day a friend of mine told me he had Rush'N Attack on the NES. I didn't belive him, but sure enough he had it and lent it to me and naturally loved it as well. Then one day another friend of mine lent me a Nintendo strategy guide. While going through it, i found there was a small section for Rush'N Attack which indicated a secret underground passageway on a particular level, after blowing up some mines, it even had some screenshots. I was amazed as i never saw that in the game and immediately fired up my NES and went in search of that passageway. After reaching the location in the screenshot, to my dissapointment i was unable to reveal the ladder to the secret underground level. Didn't know if i was doing something wrong or if it was at a different place. I kept going back to the game again and again to see if i could somehow have missed something? but it was pretty straightforward. Reach a specific set of mines on what appeared to be level 4, blow them up and the ladder should be there. So after a while i returned the strategy guide to my friend. And while i did eventually purchase my own copy of Rush'N Attack, i was never able to find those levels. As time went by I gave up on looking for those levels and then forgot about it. Then around the early 2000's when information about Nintendo games and strategy's were starting to show up on the internet. I remembred the Rush'N Attack secret and thought maybe someone has the definiteve tip on this and maybe it was done differently than what the guide indicated? So i started searching and searching but couldn't find anything referencing that particular secret. I even started asking my friends about it but nobody recalled ever seeing that secret ladder and the underground passageway. I wanted to get my hands on that guide again but by then I couldn't remember the name of it that eventually started thinking maybe i imagined it all? After searching the internet for weeks i came up on a particular strategy guide that seemed very very familiar. It was called "The Official Nintendo Players guide". I thought to myself this was it! This was the guide that will prove if i was right or if my imagination played tricks on me! So i immediately went throught the process of purchasing and could't wait to verify if this was in fact that book. A few days went by and my package arrived, i carefully went through it as to not miss anything, but it was becoming more and more familair with each page i turned confirming this was the correct guide. I finally reached the Rush'N Attack... and sure enough the infamous secret passageway was there! I read thoroughly, but again there was no special method just straightforward. Blow the mines up on what seemed level 4 in a specific area and reveal the ladder. By that time there were emulators so i started searching for different versions online with no luck. I even started purchasing different revisions of it for the NES, i believe there are 3 one was A the other B and one third one i can't remember but i do have them all. But have never been able to find any differences with them. Researching for days i was finally able to solve the mystery! After emulating different games for the famicom. I was not able to find Rush N attack for it BUT i did notice that the famicom disk system version of games had differences in them, so after searching a bit more i came upon Green Beret which was the actual name of the game in Japan. Downloaded, played, reached the section, blew up the mines and sure enough the ladder and the underground passegaway was there! After many many years i was able to get to the bottom of this! i wasn't crazy after all! Turns out the guide never mentions this particular detail and when it was made they obviously played the famicom disk version of the game and probably did not know that for the NES that particular area would be removed. Don't know the exact reason but i assume to save memory. Anyways if you want to verify for yourself, below is the link to the guide and it is on page 93. archive.org/details/The_Official_Nintendo_Players_Guide_1987/mode/2up As for the N64 Mickey sprite in this video i would say, what if OP had a very particular version of that game? as one key detail is that he remembers it vividly. Had he used GS or something else he would probably remember that as well. So i would say maybe attempt to track that cartridge down even if he sold it and then verify as it could be a one of a kind cartridge.

@GamerFolklore

8 ай бұрын

Holy smokes! That was a great story. I'm glad you managed to "solve" the mystery in the end. Your hypothesis sounds right, they played the JP version and didn't know the secret wouldn't cross over. Very intriguing, thank you for sharing!!

@greyfox4577

8 ай бұрын

@@GamerFolklore Thank you! I did have a friend have a genuine Mandela Effect with the game Simon's Quest which in itself was very cryptic and mysterious but that's probably a story for another day. 😄

I'm gonna believe whichever is the most fun to believe, if I'm honest. Life is too short to pick the most likely, realistic scenario for why someone remembers a texture in a video being there when it isn't. More fun to believe some unfinished build got out with Mickey Mouse intact and that someone at the factory 100%ed Goldeneye and then put it back in its box to be sold as brand new. Really interesting video as always!

@beardalaxy

9 ай бұрын

there HAVE been instances of employees at stores taking games, playing them, and then repackaging them with shrink wrap.

I believe I seen it I’ll ask my brothers all 5 of us played this a lot , maybe it was early copies

It's possible that something that the OP did during his playthrough of the level somehow caused the image to be loaded. Perhaps it was assumed by the devs to be completely disabled but there may have been one or two ways the image could still be enabled, such as loading the level textures and geometry from a certain place on the map that might have been unusual for most players.

6:17 I'm assuming OP saw that and agreed it's not what he's remembering? Cuz if I saw that anf made a mental note of it in elementary school and then just thought about it as an adult I'd def call it and remember it as mickey.

Man I wish OP still had that original cart. So curious. Very mysterious happenings, Goose!

This is why I love KZread. There is no other home for 20min of obscure gaming stuff :)

possibly a counterfeit cart, modified copy protection accidentally re enabling the texture

I wonder if there could have perhaps been an extremely small batch that may have used a rom that had mickey mouse, but then they used the correct rom on all subsequent batches. If that is the case, there could be some extremely rare and collectable 007 carts sitting in peoples attacks and the only way to know is to boot it up and look for this sprite.

Another possibility, how complex of a room hack is needed? Could a random manufacturing defect or bit flip change a cartridge enough?

Could this be an instance of versioning? Like the 1.0 OoT fire temple music? Or could it be about instancing? Like certain save file, certain difficulty, with certain cheats on, or specific settings on 007 mode? Maybe the right combination throws some instance where it’s visible.

Have you considered the Not for Resale version of Goldeneye? Perhaps that cartridge has the same (or similar) build as the XBOX leak and OP unknowingly had it. EDIT: I've read that there are no differences between most NFRs and their released versions, but it would be super interesting to have an expert like yourself get an ISO of the NFR and compare it to V1.0.0 of the game.

@kholdfuzion4538

9 ай бұрын

GE007 NFR has been verified to be US retail build sadly :(

As far as why it’s there in the XBLA version, when they chose a code branch as foundation for the project, they wouldn’t have chosen the retail release with all debug code removed as well as any inside dev jokes cleaned up for release like Mickey Mouse. You touched on this in the video, but this confirms that the Mickey Mouse would’ve been there until just before they prepped for retail release. As for OPs memory, it’s either him misremembering that other graffiti you pointed out in the video, GameShark, or he saw the Mickey Mouse more recently but his memory is telling him he saw it long ago. I’ve experienced something like that before. Another idea is you’ve checked all the retail carts you could, but what about when you start activating cheats in the cheat menu if one or a combo of them triggers the Mickey Mouse either as a side effect bug or intentionally. It would be a lot of work to check that but another possibility.

So one thing I remember about the gameshark is that there were codes to unlock the hidden bond picture assets on the character screen and after the gameshark was removed they remained. Maybe this is a save flag?

Could be like the Mario 64 upboost that happened during that one speedrun. Neutrinos from the sun flipped the coding in real time to make the graffiti visible.

@thishereanakinguy

9 ай бұрын

This is honestly my theory as well (maybe a gamma ray burst instead of neutrinos but regardless, something shot out from the sun)

@GamerFolklore

9 ай бұрын

It's definitely a good theory.

@kargaroc386

9 ай бұрын

Yeah neutrinos pass through the game's memory every second of every day and the enormously-vast majority do absolutely nothing. Though from what I understand, this explanation, while technically possible, is more often used as a sort of short-hand for "the cartridge got tilted by accident and they didn't notice". But there's a problem. If OP says that he encountered the texture many times and not just once, glitches (and I mean the original meaning of the word: a short-lived, usually externally-caused random error) would be extra-ordinarily unlikely as an explanation. It's plausible for a jerked crooked cartridge to create noise on the data lines and corrupt memory such that the texture would appear. It's not nearly as plausible for the same chip glitching to bug the game in such a way that it *always* displays the texture even after power-cycling, since the required changes to memory would be a lot more complex.

@yourenviousenemy

9 ай бұрын

@@kargaroc386 So of course I'm just speculating but I think of it this way: the cartridge got tilted/glitched/neutrino-whatever once and it happened to be that OP noticed the Mickey Mouse graffiti that day. He took a moment to sort of marvel at it, let's say, and then moved along. Now, maybe it never appeared again but he just always assumed it was there? And now, years later, his memory of the one time he saw it FEELS like he saw it many times. I hope I'm making sense.

@mechbfp3219

8 ай бұрын

Neutrinos don’t interact with matter on a level high enough to do that. You are thinking high energy space particles, such as gamma rays.

This video was very interesting because I think I’ve seen this texture before today but I don’t remember it in Goldeneye.

Thanks again Ryan for the infinite wisdom.

So I think I have a simple explanation. OP saw this 6:20 for years, and between playing the game back in the days and posting on reddit about mickey Mouse - he also stumbled upon the article on Cutting Room Floor and simply mixed 6:20 with the image on CRF page. I mean, they ARE similar. Goose says the image at 6:20 does not resemble Mickey Mouse in the slightest, but I disagree. It looks very much like that MM image only flipped horizontally and without the hat, and some details about the hands position are different, but... it DOES look like some cartoon character, and is mostly white and red. I know I would sure mix up these two images in my mind and convince myself that I saw that Mickey Mouse graffiti from CRF page in my game back in '97. EDIT: Oh. So yeah, basically, what Goose says at 13:50 :D EDIT 2: This might be my second favorite video on the channel from now on. The first will always be about the Perfect Dark ghost. Was it ever seen after the video went live? Is the Chicago Ghost Case solved?

It seems pretty obvious that people as kids thought the graffiti that looked like Mickey, was in fact Mickey. And that it’s just a coincidence that there was an unused Mickey graffiti.

I would think that particular copy of their game contained a different build version on the game cart that had this texture visible in the game. Because there were multiple build version releases for each region so some things will be different between different game carts and some of them had this texture visible, but in some builds the code which displays this texture has a random chance of showing it maybe? Some games were able to have random textures displayed for certain things each time you load the levels it changes.

Mickey mouse in 007? I don't think he was *ONTO* something, I think he was *ON* something

Odd manufacturing mistakes do sometimes happen. I've not really heard of it effecting date on cartridges, but who knows? I once bought a commercial VHS tape (one of the Neon Genesis: Evangelion series) that had no 'tape' inside, just the clear lead going from one reel straight to another.

@MyMakingWavesProject

8 ай бұрын

That’s like when I had a gold bar in school and it’s supposed to be caramac gold surrounded by biscuit but this one day it turned out to be solid golden chocolate. I was elated.

TIER 5: THE DEPTHS - EVERY COPY OF GOLDENEYE 64 IS PERSONALIZED

I have played GoldenEye on the GameCube my old friend had once and he frequently used a GaneShark on it but the Mickey was still there when the system was reset. I think there was a way to activate it or a bug that causes it.

So heres one for you. On bunker 2 when the helicopter is there , I *think/remember* that you could go down into the main entrance of the bunker and Ourumov and Xenia would be leaving the bunker walking up the stairs towards the helicopter. I am not sure if I dreamed this but I remember renting Goldeneye from blockbuster when it first came out and this happening? Probably just a dream but it sticks with me to this day and I swear it happened whenever I think about it.

Have you ever done a video on the Citadel level in Goldeneye? id love to hear one the developers talk about how it was discovered and its origins

G14 classified, thats a good rush hour reference

Golden eye had so many cheats i never even thought of using the gameshark now i feel like i missed out

I figure OP actually saw the other red, white, and black animal mascot looking texture and then retroactively conflated the unused Mickey one with it.

Roms often come with checksums. These are long numbers that are calculated based on the exact byte sequence of the ROM, and serve as a kind of fingerprint to the ROM. They are used to verify that the ROM you're getting is exactly byte-for-byte what you think you're getting and not a forgery or a corrupted file. Even a single bit or byte difference in the ROM file will produce a completely different checksum. So if there are different versions of the ROM floating around, they would have different checksums. If anyone ever ripped a cart with the graffiti visible, the checksum for that cart's ROM would be completely different than other carts.

My favorite self insert was naming a smg gun the KLOBB, for Kenneth lobb a Nintendo employee. I forgot what he did. Too lazy to google it but I’m pretty sure he was a producer.

I have another interesting story, 20+ years ago my friend told me once he had found a weird gun he had never seen before in Archives, ive spent hours trying to find it never found it

@GamerFolklore

5 ай бұрын

That sounds truly amazing, a classic playground rumor.

Are we certain there wasn't an early (but publicly released) version that had it? Maybe one of the devs snuck it in, but it was caught soon after launch and taken out? Just a thought/theory.

Just past 17:10, you mention youre not sure if the code would still be active after the gameshark was removed, like the n64 cart could be permanently changed by the gs or not. I had a gameshark for both n64 and gameboy color back in the day, me and my brother would mess around with both all the time. Never had it happen on the n64 that i remember, but for sure remember that our copy of pokemon yellow on gameboy got completely corrupted from using the gameshark. The gameshark permanently altered the gameboy cart so that pikachu who follows u everywhere in that game, would only loosely follow u, and randomly would dash across across the screen very fast lol. So id totally believe a gameshark could f with the memory on an n64 cart permanently, i saw it happen on a gameboy cart, why not. Great video as usual thanks

@GamerFolklore

8 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing! I agree that a Gameshark could have permanent effects, but I wasn't sure. Always cool to hear additional stories supporting this thesis.

Memories can be very deceptive. I randomly saw a YT video about the shop keeper from Clash At Demonhead and was flooded with nostalgia. It looked familiar but not quite right. I swore ANOTHER game had the only shopkeeper in the game hidden in a waterfall with the same layout and UI. I made some posts on Reddit, watched more videos, found nothing and still swore it was a different game. Eventually I saw the box art for the game and it clicked. I played the game at my mom's friends house on her sons NES while he was at school. I was still too young to go to school so of course the memories was hazy.... All this to say I would've bet anything the memory I had that made little sense was absolutely more real then the proof i had on front of my face.

Theory 3 is definitely more believable than a change in space-time making Mickey disappear from Goldeneye, but knowing how the brain can get memories so very wrong I still think Theory 1 is probably the most likely. The brain is very open to suggestion especially when trying to call up an old memory, it will fill in any gaps the best it can

Is it possible that it is loaded and placed, but for some reason the grafitti decal is placed just behind the container wall (rather than on or slightly in front of it), and OP was running along next to it with the camera slightly clipped into the container?

I have never played Goldeneye, but could it be possible that the graffiti appears by a (currently) unknown easter egg? There was a similar thing with "Mario's Early Years: Fun With Numbers" on the SNES where an easter egg went undiscovered for over 25 years, to the point people thought it was some weird cut content, which involved clicking a very specific pixel, to activate the easter egg of the developers' heads singing. Don't think it's entirely out of the question OP did something that triggered it that he has no idea of. Could also be a slightly earlier cartridge release too, especially if it OP got theirs on release.

@17:50 Somewhat similar story here. Had nearly forgotten about it. No one has ever believed me, but for what it's worth: My brother and I received the game factory-sealed one faithful Christmas eve. We played it for the following two nights alternating with OoT. When awakening the next morning, I noticed an all new save file. For the first time I saw the heading "Cheats". Upon opening up level select I was treated to the view of all the stages up and to Jungle, unlocked and completed on Double Agent, and I also had access to all the possible cheats up to that point .My brother, albeit older than I, would not have had the skillz to unlock all those cheats (I believe Surface was the last stage we had gotten to), nor did he have friends over. Truly an odd mystery. :-/

What about the texture glitch that happens when you play for too long? Haven't we seen footage of that with the elite soldiers or whatever?

I have two additional theories : - OP played on an early emulator that didn't perfectly emulate the game and the texture got loaded in when it shouldn't. (And they don't want to admit to having pirated the game) - OP saw the article and thought it would make for a good Reddit post

I think his memory blended the leaked XBox Live Arcade version that was planned to come out in 2007 with the N64 version, because he started to look into this Mandela effect thing in 2017. That's all the Mandela effect really is. When a person misremembers something.

Gameshark theory would require the shark to be there still since the ROM is not written to.

I seem to remember hearing about this, maybe with other playground rumors, but can’t recall seeing it back in the day. I still have my cartridge from 1997 so I’ll investigate

My suspicion would be OP accidentally ended up with an early build cartridge. Maybe something sent out for journalists to review or an internal copy at Nintendo or Rare. It's not unheard of for copies meant for internal use to slip into the second hand market. The used game market wasn't established back then and was very wild west. The fact the leaked XBL version has the graffiti in the level in a spot matching OP's description is really strong evidence for me. They must've used a similar early build as the base for the XBL port.